Fiendish Play (3 page)

“Man, I don’t know what you mean. Speak English.”

“I just mean…Chicks over here are going to love a guy whose both an artist type
and
who speaks French. It’s going to be like catching fish with a net for you.”

Ah
. Finally I got what headspace he was in. I laughed at Marcus and at myself for not catching on a lot quicker.

“I bet you killed it with the ladies there? Am I right?” he asked, eyebrows rising again, like he needed every sordid detail.

“I only had one girlfriend in France. And besides, I’m more of a
quality
type of guy.”

“That’s a shame, cause I’m more a quantity type of guy.” He held one of his hands up proudly, waiting for me to fist pump him my approval. Which I did, but only because I found it entertaining. The guy was a lot of fun and could make me laugh.

He ended up parking his car near a pathway with street lights which was a block over from Greek Row. It lead to the campus library and a few buildings on the far end of the campus. He didn’t trust leaving his precious automobile near the drunken antics spilling out of those buildings. I suppose I could understand that reasoning. I had the same paranoia about my motorbike too and would have probably done the same thing.

I followed Marcus down a dim pathway lined with trees and bushes and to a massive white pillared house with Greek letters painted about the double door entryway. The house was abuzz with music and people drinking, talking and dancing. It wasn’t all that different to the college parties I went to in France. Youth is youth in their quest for a good time, although there were definitely differences in the party atmosphere and how people conducted themselves. Where I would say partying in France was a slow and steady burn, here was something I would say was more full throttle. Although I still wasn’t convinced of the
anarchy
part yet, as my parents so eloquently put it.

Marcus was welcomed with a bunch of high-fives, pats on the back and a whole stream of college girls who seemed to be sent to his side to try and convince him to pledge this particular fraternity. The majority of them circling him were blond. Marcus would have certainly been in his element. It didn’t take long before one of them strutted over to my side and started chatting to me as well. I guess they figured if they got in good with the friend, it would help his decision along. I wasn’t complaining about their methods. It was actually a pretty smart move in trying to hook a big fish like Marcus. They definitely were using the right bait.

With the sorority girl on my side, I could foresee my first night in the United States turning out to be a memorable one. I saw the pleased look on Marcus’ face when he saw the rather busty blond practically attached to my hip, giving me her undivided attention. Not that I had had trouble getting girls’ attention in the past. The offers came pretty easy to me. Always have. I kept my body in good shape, and knew girls liked what they saw. What can I say? I’m not conceited. But my quiet and brooding nature was apparently charming and mysterious to the opposite sex, and they lined up to find out more. Though I never cheated on my girlfriend Nancine in France. I didn’t need to look elsewhere when I already had the best in my eyes. And for me, loyalty was something that was imbedded into my genes.

“Are you new here too?” The girl giggled into my ear rubbing her hand over my chest. Great, I had one who was touchy feely too. Look, there’s nothing wrong with assertive girls, but personally, I prefer the chase. I wanted to be the hunter, not the hunted. So right away, I was already losing interest. I think she told me her name was Chastity but I wasn’t too sure over the loud boom of the music. I found myself nodding my head up and down to all her questions just to get her to stop her incessant chatter. I don’t know why I had switched off the way I did. I should have been a lot more excited about the idea of no-strings attached sex in a new country with a hot girl. But I wasn’t. After about an hour of continuous compliments and stroking my ego, she offered me the inevitable. She was kissing my necking and sucking on my earlobe when she invited me upstairs. Perhaps it was the way at which she offered herself up so easily which turned me off, but I found myself making up an excuse to leave the party. Chastity gave me the death stare as I excused myself from her manicured fingers locked on my waist. I guess she wasn’t used to rejection.

Marcus seemed to understand when I explained to him my important meeting the next morning on campus, and he looked even more pleased when I offered to take his car home. He had every intention of taking up the offers in front of him and said he’d get a lift home the next day.

I shoved Marcus’ keys into my jean pocket as I headed out the door and crossed the yard to where the pathway was leading back behind the buildings where the car was parked.

It was nice to be alone again. The trees lining the path filled me with a serene feeling in the dead of night. The slight wind in the air catching the branches and making the trees sway and move like they were alive. It was these kinds of visuals that moved me and created the sculpture designs in my head. That, as well as all the architecture I had seen in the many places around the world. It was why I liked to incorporate pieces of metal into my woodwork. I was getting excited at seeing the campus in the morning. I had seen some pictures of the buildings online which dated back to the early 1900s and knew that visually, the buildings here were some of the oldest and most interesting in design for a campus. I was keen to be motivated by this place for my final year sculpture piece.

It was then an unusual sound stopped me dead in my tracks. At first I thought my mind was playing games with me. I can’t tell you how many times my conscious, which flashed at rapid speeds, made me think I was having conversations that weren’t even happening, or made unreal thoughts and ideas play out in my head like I could actually see them in front of me. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination projecting itself into my real life and sending me into a state of confusion, but other times, I think it was trying to see alternate realities and putting together pieces of situations all around me so I could see and explore every angle. Even trying to explain how it works was disorienting. Yes, yes, I know. My mind was a complex place I was still learning to control and operate.

I was about to keep walking when I heard the sound again. It was whimper. A girl’s cry. It was muffled but there was no mistaking when I heard it the second time round. It sounded like someone was in trouble. I moved slowly to where I believed the noise was coming from. I knew something was going on in the darkness behind the bushes. A chill hit my skin as I heard the crying once more as I got closer to the sound, knowing that what was in my head was right. Although I was nowhere near prepared for what I would see.

As I shifted some branches that were blocking my eye line from view, I saw her. The source of the crying. Under dim light from a torch that was resting on a large rock, I could see two guys. Their backs were turned to where I was standing in the bushes, and they were tying a girl with a mess of long brown hair, in very little clothing, to a tree. Her head was hanging down so I couldn’t see her face, but I could clearly hear her cries and pleading to be let go. To stop.

What the fuck was going on here?
I moved closer, brushing along the leaves, making a rustling sound. Her head lifted up from off her chest hearing the noise I had made. It was then that I saw her face for the first time. I swallowed back something lodged in my throat. Amongst my need to get closer and help, I was completely thrown by her beauty which made my body instantly react. I had to force myself to breathe, even consciously telling my brain to swallow down a breath so I wouldn’t pass out from loss of air. I had never had this type of reaction from seeing a girl before. Perhaps it was because I was trying to make sense of the urgent situation she was in, but the smarter, more logical side of my brain told me something different. It told me that my inability to use my body like a normal person had something to do with my heart constricting and my pulse racing at the sight of those big brown eyes that were red and glossy with pained emotion. That, and the fact I was drawn irresistibly to her pale skin against her chocolate-brown hair. Just the look on her innocent face screamed at me for an escape. Her image had grounded me like nothing I had ever known. It was scary. It was beautiful. She looked like a fallen angel in the moonlight. Then she did something which moved me into immediate action. She mouthed the words ‘help me’.

There was no mistaking what I should do next. I marched up to the tree trunk where the two guys still had their backs turned, fastening the ropes against her body, and I yanked one of them by the shoulders. The action caused them both to jump and swing around to look at me.

“What the hell are you doing to this girl? Let her go...right now!” I yelled at their faces that I could barely see in the soft illumination of the night. They both had on jeans and black T-shirts with a weird white emblem on the pocket on their chest. I squinted at the logo, but couldn’t make out the picture, although something about the emblem seemed familiar. One guy had short spiky hair that I could just see in the darkness and the other, a buzz cut. They were the only two differentiating differences between the two.

The guys looked at each other and then back at me before responding. “Best you ignore what you’ve seen, and get on your way,” Buzz Cut said in a deep menacing voice. Spiky Hair cracked his knuckles anticipating the obvious. That it wouldn’t be that simple and that a fight was brewing.

“No, I won’t do that. Now untie her. Now!” I demanded.

The guys started laughing at me which only made the girl start sobbing more loudly. She probably thought she was about to witness a beat down along with what horrible things they had intended for her. Little did she know of my capabilities. Yes I was an artist, and to some people that was a stereotype, meaning I was weak and probably too sensitive, but my step-dad believed I should have more than one skill to make myself a man and never ever become someone who could be so easily pigeonholed. It was the reason he taught me everything he knew about cars. It was also the reason he got me into boxing at a very young age. I had been boxing since I was eight years old. My step-dad, Colton, had said to me when he took me to my first boxing class that, “
James, a real man should never be violent, but sometimes, situations will come up when it’s the only way to keep someone safe or to protect yourself from the hate and cruelty in the world. You might need to use your fists. But a real man only hits if there is no other choice. So you need to be prepared for those choices which may not be yours, but will be choices that are made for you.”

I didn’t want to hurt these two guys, but given they had no intention of letting the girl go they didn’t give me any other choice. Spiky Hair approached me first. He stalked over to me, his fists already raised. I anticipated his first blow and then the second by sideswiping both of his attempts which caused him to stumble on his feet. He cursed himself under his breath. I could tell he didn’t like to miss. That made me smirk to myself. When he shifted on his feet trying to regain his footing again, I applied one full blow to the side of his stomach. I knew exactly what a simple, yet powerful punch would do to him. It dropped him to his knees, gasping for breath. Before he could get any air into his lungs, I clocked his face, smashing his cheek, knocking him out. His limp body dropping onto the ground. “
Two hits
.
Just two
,” I counted in my head.

Buzz Cut didn’t wait to check how hurt his crony was. He tried to come up behind me, grabbing onto both of my arms, trying to pin them back so I didn’t have use of them. But someone who knows how to defend themselves also knows that you don’t need your arms to win a fight. You just need to know how to use the rest of your body, like your legs or your head. I angled my head, pulled it forward and swung it back full force, hitting Buzz Cut’s face, forcing him to let go of my arms and put them on his nose. I knew it was broken and gushing blood by the way I had hit him. The moment he freed me, I walked behind him and kicked his legs out, making him fall to the ground, still clutching his nose. When he struggled to get onto his knees, I clocked him in the face, knocking him out too.

Two hits each. Two knockouts. Two...just two.
I watched my hand shake from the adrenaline, but I also knew it was from something else that was embedded in the very fibers of my skin. My reaction to violence had always caused these shakes to surface. I wasn’t sure why my body reacted this way, but I figured it had something to do with my peaceful nature. I hated hurting people, even in a situation like this. But I figured the fewer hits I had to make, the more I would feel okay with what I had to do when it crept up into my conscious afterwards. Being violent is not something that sits well in my stomach, or my head. There was something about my reaction that felt like it had been created from something in my past and not part of who I really was. But it had never been clear where the tremors in my hand stemmed from and why. I even had a doctor check me out, and his words to me were, “
James, there isn’t any physical reason for your shakes
.” This meant only one thing. It was psychological. But from what mental anguish...I didn’t know.

There was a still silence in the air now that both the guys’ bodies were lying lifeless on the ground. My mind took a second to regain a clear train of thought. I couldn’t let the guilt of what I had to do take over. My shakes had stopped, and I realized I had to focus on making the girl feel safe. My head lifted to where I could hear her crying again. I ran over to the tree and started loosening and untying the ropes that had her secured to the trunk of the tree. I could tell she had put up a battle against her attackers because there were defensive cuts and scratches all over her arms and chest. “Hey, you’re okay now. I’m going to get you out of these ropes. Then I will take you home. Don’t worry. You’re safe.”