Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (28 page)

And Pearl believed him too.

She reached for her Taser and zapped his fuckin’ ass again, letting his evil black ass have it until he passed out.

After making sure he was unconscious, Pearl strode calmly
into the kitchen and got the dishrag she had used to put out the fire she’d started on the stove. Back in the living room she planted her left foot hard on Mookie’s forehead, then scrunched the rag up into a ball and shoved it deep in his mouth.

Mookie’s mouth and body were slack and motionless, but to Pearl’s surprise she heard some kind of movement coming from the kitchen. She ran back in again and stepped around the island and stared at Ransom. The poisonous dart had taken him down, but he wasn’t dead. His body was shuddering and convulsing as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position.

There had been no info on this country cat in her father’s files, and as far as Pearl knew he hadn’t taken part in the murders of her family. She thought about it for a quick second, then moved deliberately. Ransom might not have killed her people but he damn sure would have if Mookie had told him to.

Sliding a Slim Jim out of her Attack Pak, Pearl bent down and gave Ransom a real quick and merciful smiley face. She didn’t hang around long enough to watch the blood spread out on the floor under his body.

Back in the living room she rolled Mookie over and positioned him so that he was splayed out on his stomach with his arms stretched over his head. She used another stretch of cord to secure his tied hands to the footrest on the wet bar, and his feet to one leg of the plush sofa. Then she lit a Philly blunt she’d found on the living-room table and sat down on the floor next to Mookie so they could have that little conversation he had requested.

Turning his head to the side, Pearl punched him in his nose until he was conscious. Then she pulled up the back of his shirt and placed a pen in his hand, and a slip of paper close enough for him to write on.

“What’s the elevator code?”

For a hardbody street niggah who had terrorized an entire community and deaded countless rivals in the cruelest of ways, Mookie was a big bitch at heart. Do what she could do to him? Sheeiit. It took less than twenty deep cigar burns on Mookie’s naked back before he scribbled a six-digit number with an asterisk at the beginning and at the end.

Satisfied, Pearl rolled the big niggah over till he was once again on his back, then texted the code to Justine Honore. Minutes later four furious mamas, who were burning with grief and starving for vengeance, stepped off the elevator and into Mookie’s grand suite.

Mookie looked like a big rusty-ass whale as he lay flat on the floor with his arms stretched over his head.

Vickie, the youngest of the sisters, moved in on him first.

Before Pearl could say a word the chick strode over to Mookie and sliced him. Her sparkling blade slashed deep into his fat armpits, severing the tendons that connected his pecs to his biceps, and Mookie screamed into his gag as his shoulders separated from his ligaments and fell back on the floor.

Vickie got him at the feet next, grabbing his legs and slicing the Achilles tendons behind his ankles. Mookie shrieked into his gag as he lay helpless, unable to move a goddamn thing.

“Niggahs ain’t the only ones who can get medieval!” Vickie yelled, and Pearl stood back as the Honore chicks went to work. Justine turned up the music and the rest of them got ready to party.

Pearl didn’t even flinch as one of the sisters pulled out a hammer and they took turns pounding Mookie’s fingertips. His wrists were tied tightly and he tried his best to curl his hands into fists, but he was no match for the mothers of the four innocent little girls he’d had murdered. They bent his fingers back until the
bones popped, then hammered every one of his nails until his hands were straight bloody.

But those grieving chicks had waited a long time to get their get back and they weren’t finished yet.

They flopped Mookie over onto his stomach and pulled down his pants. Big bad Mookie had shit on himself from fear and pain, and Pearl sneered at the sight of his gigantic ashy ass and stank, shit-stained drawers.

Sitting on the sofa, Pearl watched the women do unto Mookie as he had done unto those who they’d loved. She thought about her sister Diamond and how men like Mookie had used and abused her and planted their poison inside her head. She also thought about her father Irish Baines who had devoted his life to helping young black men escape the trappings of hood life. Him and Zeta had been parents to their children and grandchildren, and to all the children of their community.

But gazing at Mookie’s flabby black ass as the Honore women took turns rodding him with a foot-long spiked metal dick, it was the thought of Chante and Sasha that hurt Pearl the most.

If they had lived, those two little girls would have grown into two special young ladies, Pearl knew. Both of them had been brilliant and loving, talented and beautiful, and it was the snuffing out of their lives and the brutal manner in which they had met their deaths, without even the benefit of holding each other’s hands, that completely iced Pearl’s heart as Mookie squealed and moaned and took a hurting that was far less than what his murderous ass had put on those children.

The Honore women were thorough and efficient. They were finished dicking Mookie and now they commenced to whipping his big fat ass.

“This is for Monique!” Justine spat, and swung a piece of plastic
clothesline at Mookie’s gigantic butt. A long welt rose on Mookie’s flank immediately, and he clenched his ass cheeks together and moaned.

Vickie was up next. She wrapped her white plastic cord around her fist and Pearl saw it was the same kind of clothesline that used to bite and sting her legs when her and Diamond jumped Double Dutch with it when they were kids.

“This is for Fatima!” Vickie swung so hard that the rope cut into Mookie’s ass and bright blood seeped through his skin.

“This is for Jaqueline!”

“This is for Nae-Nae!”

“This is for Cynthia!”

“This is for Tricia!”

“This is for Marlo!”

Pearl closed her eyes as the Honores took turns whipping Mookie and shredding his ass for all the suffering him and his boyz had brought into their lives.

The sound of the ropes zipping through the air and cutting into his flesh became more and more frantic and frenzied, and Pearl couldn’t help chanting along with the Honore sisters, and whispering the names of her own dead loved ones.

“This is for Daddy! This is for Mama! This is for Diamond! This is for Chante! This is for Sasha!”

Pearl didn’t open her eyes until she smelled the fumes, and by then it was just about over for Mookie. She watched as they poured a deadly mixture of rubbing alcohol and slow-burning fuel all over Mookie’s naked body. The gangsta screamed into his gag and bucked his torn bulk around on the floor as the toxic liquid seeped into his cuts and seared his raw flesh. One of the sisters stood near Mookie’s head and waited patiently until he had stopped raging and flopping around, then she poured her portion
carefully into his hair and around his mouth, soaking liquid into the dishrag that Pearl had stuffed deeply in his mouth.

Mookie moaned and gagged, panicking as the toxic fuel slid down his throat and burned its way into his stomach. He gagged and hissed, the poisonous chemicals creating chaos in his tortured esophagus.

Pearl rose from her seat on the couch and stood over Mookie as he lay there unable to scream anymore, but still bucking and writhing in pain.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked him.

Mookie’s eyes bulged with fear and he shrieked terror from his throat like a petrified little bitch.

Pearl held a box of matchsticks high in the air. She took one out and pretended to strike it, and that got Mookie’s full attention.

“I said, do you know who the fuck
I am?”

Fear multiplied in Mookie’s eyes as he stared at the matches. Pearl saw him desperately searching his memory and coming up blank, and she wasn’t surprised when Mookie blinked rapidly then shook his head slightly, no.

“Nah, you wouldn’t know me, would you. We don’t run in the same circles, so it’s cool. But just so you understand, my name is Pearl,” she said, lifting the edge of her shirt and revealing the birthmark she shared with her twin.

“Pearl Baines. I’m the sister of the chick you strangled. I’m the pride of the good woman you had tortured, and I’m the joy of that fearless black man you got your boys to murder. And yeah, I’m also the mother and the aunt of those two sweet little girls you had tied to their beds screaming and crying before they lit that gasoline and left those poor babies there to burn. The same way you’re about to burn. So do you know me now?”

Realization was all over Mookie’s face, and with it came the sure knowledge of Pearl’s incredible wrath. His eyes bulged with
the force of this knowledge and Pearl smiled as she heard her father’s voice in her ear.

Don’t get mad, Daddy’s Pearl! Get even!

Pearl glanced at her watch.

She was certain that Zoe had already done her thing, and right about now the East Coast Classic team that Mookie had bet a stack of money on shoulda been walking off the basketball court dripping in defeat. Pearl almost laughed as she thought about the mild sedative and strong laxative that Zoe had slipped into the point guard’s water bottle. He was a hotheaded baller who had fast feet and could pound the rock, but he was arrogant and grimy as fuck too, and had been on the take for Mookie ever since he’d been in the league. Zoe hadn’t juiced him with enough drugs to take him completely out of commission, but she had damn sure given him enough to slow him down and throw him way off his usual smoking game.

“And guess what?” Pearl said as she rose to her feet and prepared to leave Mookie to die the horrible death that he so justly deserved. “That phat hunk of gwap you dropped on your little loudmouthed point guard from Philly? You can chalk that shit up as a loss, baby. Right about now he’s probably either passed out or shitting his lungs out. Either way, you lost your last bet, Mookie. Your odds just got evened, you fat ugly bastard, and this time you lost for good!”

Waving the Honore women toward the elevator, Pearl stepped back and swiped a matchstick across the outside of the box. Staring into Mookie’s enraged eyes and seeing all that fear … it did something to her. Pearl held the burning matchstick over him then tossed it down on his chest. A tremendous weight was lifted from her as the flaming tip rolled down to his stomach and ignited the fuel that had pooled on his skin.

All five women stepped into the penthouse elevator and
watched in silence as Mookie shrieked and brayed and burned slowly on the floor. By the time Pearl punched in the code, his skin was bubbling and scorching and Mookie was rocking from side to side and bucking around like a chained bull. A horrible sound came from deep in his chest as he shrieked with indescribable pain, and Pearl could only imagine that those were the same sounds her niece and daughter had made before they died.

“Hold up!” Vickie Honore stuck her hand out of the elevator before the doors could close. She darted back into the suite. “I’ma turn the music up a little louder, Mookie!” she said as she ran past him and over to the boom box. “You just keep hollering and making that ugly-ass noise! You got some nice sounds going, dude. This must be your beat!”

The women rode down to the second floor of the hotel in a satisfied silence, each of them engrossed in their own thoughts as they rejoiced in the aftertaste of their bitter revenge.

Stepping off lively on the second floor, they found the stairwell. As the penthouse elevator closed and rose up the shaft, Pearl and the Honore sisters silently composed themselves, then walked briskly down one flight to the lobby where they’d already arranged to split up and leave the hotel through four different exits. They would disperse into the crowded city streets to be picked up by the driver Carlita had already arranged for.

But shit doesn’t always go as planned.

Pearl had just walked past the bank of elevators and was heading down a carpeted hallway that was lined with ground-floor guestrooms on both sides. Her destination was an exit sign at the end of the corridor, and she knew the rest of her life was waiting on the other side of that door.

She had only gone a few steps when he grabbed her.

Rough hands gripped her from behind, catching her by surprise and lifting her from her feet.

“Yeah, bitch!” Krazy Kevvie, the bodyguard she’d cursed out at Club Humpz, roared in her ear as he choked the shit outta her. “You thought you was slick, yo! I know who you is now! We was on the look-out for ya ass! My man Scotch put Yoda down on you
and
your slimy-ho sister! You thought nobody peeped ya grimy game? Well we did, bitch! We
did
!”

Pearl went into fight mode. She had forgotten all about this psycho-looking niggah with the one big eye, but here he was now, cock-strong and crazy with fury. Kevvie’s breath was hot and stank on her skin as he tried to strangle the life from her body. Pearl sucked for air as she clawed at her neck, instinctively seeking to break his death grip.

“You coming upstairs, bitch! Mookie’s gonna
kill
you …” Kevvie grunted as Pearl elbowed wildly from behind, catching him in the solar plexus. There was no way in hell he was gonna get her back in that penthouse elevator. She took advantage of his momentary stunning and slammed her heel down on his instep, then she reached between their bodies and grabbed his nuts.

Black spots appeared before Pearl’s eyes and she knew she couldn’t survive much longer. Her brain was begging for oxygen yet she forced herself not to panic. Using every bit of her strength and will, she choked his crotch with the same fury that he choked her neck, and it was Krazy Kevvie who let go first.

“Bitch!” he shrieked, flinging her to the floor as he reached for his nuts and grimaced. “I’ma kill ya fuckin’ ass!”

Pearl scooted backward on the carpet, gasping and choking, trying to get some air and get away from him at the same time.