White Diamonds (13 page)

“That makes you a good actor.”

“Perhaps.”

“What happens to your character?  I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

“It isn’t pretty, Analeigh.  You don’t want to know.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

“As you know, I play the part of one of the Lost Boys.  Although it appears that I have overcome my past as well as can be expected, I relapse and nightmares become an unrelenting force.  I feel alone and afraid to talk to anyone, and one night…”  Nash stopped talking and kissed a tear from Analeigh’s cheek.

“You die?”

“Yes.”

She sat up but Nash held her down.  “It happens, Analeigh.  Not every story has a happy ending, and not everyone is able to overcome a haunted past.”

Analeigh took a deep breath and exhaled.  “How does it happen?”

Leaning over her, Nash said, “Oh, Analeigh, please don’t make me answer that.”

“I want to know, Nash.  I have to know.”  She lightly ran her fingertips along his chest and moved downward.

Nash closed his eyes.  He could never say no to Analeigh.  “You don’t play fair, do you?”

“No,” she admitted with a giggle.  “Tell me what happens.”

Nash held Analeigh’s hands in his and spoke the words he did not want to speak.  “He hangs himself.”

There was silence in the room.  “I knew someone.  They found him that way.”  Analeigh looked away.  “They said he would burn in hell for taking his own life.  Is that true?”

“I don’t know, honey.  I swear I don’t.  But it’s not me out there.  I’m only playing a part.”

Analeigh turned to him.  “It was my brother.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

“My parents didn’t seem to care.  They said that after that he belonged to Lucifer.”

“I’m no theologian, but I don’t believe that.  I’m guessing he feared being one of the Lost Boys, right?”

“They were going to get rid of him the following day.”

Nash knew he was running late, but work could wait.  He had to make certain that Analeigh was okay.  “How can I help?  I’ll do anything.”

Analeigh took his hand.  “Promise you won’t become your character.”

Nash now understood the fear in Analeigh’s eyes.  “I promise, Analeigh.  I’m playing a part, and that’s all.  I want to be with you for as long as you will have me.”

She smiled a nervous smile.

“I am late, though, but I should be home early tonight.”  With a smile and a wink, he left.

An aching fear was his constant companion that day and when he opened the door to the trailer, he shouted Analeigh’s name.  “I’m back here.”

He followed the voice to the bedroom where Analeigh was waiting for him, wearing nothing.  “What a welcome!  You want me freshly showered or do you want to do me dirty?”

“Hmm, both.”

She lifted his shirt over his head and ran the zipper in his jeans down its track, slowly sliding them down his legs.  He was hard already and she kissed the head of his cock, tightening her lips around it, releasing it and sucking it a few times.

“You may not have a choice if you keep that up.”

She led him to the shower and turned the water to a sensual warm.  Squeezing out a generous amount of shower gel, she began with his face and moved downward with light touches and deep massages.  Nash was built of solid muscle and Analeigh caressed all of him.  She knelt on the floor of the shower and looked up at him.  Placing her hands firmly on his butt, she pulled him to her and took his cock into her mouth.  Nash watched her, biting his lip to keep from exploding.  Her wet blonde hair tickled his flesh and he placed his hands firmly on the shower walls.  Then she stopped and ordered him to sit.  He slid down the wall as she kissed him.  Straddling her lover, she let the head of his cock open her, sliding back and forth across her clitoris until she orgasmed.  She took him deep inside of her, letting him fill her completely.  Looking into his eyes, she moved slowly, watching the look on his face as his climax began to build.  She squeezed his cock and he moaned, giving in to the hunger.  “Analeigh!”  The breathy word came as he filled her with his abundant seed.  He exhaled slowly, his husky words, “I love you,” reverberating off the shower walls.  She kissed him and declared her love forever.  The two lovers remained in each other’s arms with the warm water beating down upon them, promising each other a lifetime of love.

Once Nash’s film had completed its final scene, he and Analeigh exchanged vows in a small town across the border in Washington State.  They didn’t know where their journey in life would take them, but they knew they would always be together.

Hell’s Angel:

Buried beneath a mountain of student loan debt and with no means to pay it back, Malika reluctantly agrees to a year for year payback program in a remote and destitute part of the country.  Thinking that a life without the finer things will teach their daughter a lesson in financial responsibility, the parents of the carefree young woman never expect their plan to backfire.  Their plan not only backfires, but it erupts like a volcano when their dainty daughter commits a crime more heinous, in their eyes, than murder in the first degree.

***

“Steal a little and they throw you in jail.  Steal a lot and they make you king.”

If this old saying is true, there should be a sparkling crown of shining gold and brilliant diamonds imprinted on every form of paper and metal currency issued by the United States Government.  At least, that was the opinion of a young woman by the name of Malika Jones.

Malika had not always felt that way.  Born and raised in Philadelphia, the seat of American “democracy,” Malika had been proud of the history of her country, and not unlike many young women, she had believed every word spoken by her beloved teachers of United States history.  It wasn’t until the spring of her senior year in college, in fact, that she had known anything but fairness in what she thought was the best country in the world.

Malika had not been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but her family had everything they needed.  Money had never been very important to Malika, but that was probably because she had never worried about such basic things as where she would find her next meal, nor had she known anyone burdened by such concerns.  It was during her freshman year of college that she had decided to become a teacher.  She really had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew she didn’t want to spend her college weekends doing a lot of math problems or solving financial equations.  At the time, teaching seemed like the perfect profession.  The coursework was relatively easy which allowed her plenty of time to party.

Reality didn’t hit until she graduated with a student loan debt of nearly fifty thousand dollars.  Her parents had been furious.  They had worked hard to pay for Malika’s tuition, room and board, and the young woman had promised to work part-time to pay for her incidentals, or ask-identals, as was the standing joke on campus.  But Malika had not gotten a part-time job.  She had not even attempted to find one.  Instead, from the early days of her freshman year she had developed a taste for designer clothes and as well a taste for the party life.

It was her roommate who had let her in on a little secret.  “It doesn’t matter if your parents are paying for everything.  You can still get loans and pay them off later.  It’s no big deal.  Everybody does it.”

As a freshman, later seemed a long way off.  Now, it was staring her in the face.  The economy was tough and the salary for a first year teacher was abysmal.

“What is this?”  Her mother had flashed the loan statement in front of her face.

“I have ten years to pay it off, Mom.”

“Yes you do, but have you done the math?  Your payments will be a pretty hefty chunk of your salary.  You do know the starting salary for teachers, don’t you?”

“Yes, it’s pitiful, measly, and not much more than a bag of pennies.”

“A small bag of pennies, so unless you plan to find a job, or two, right here in Philly and live with us for the next ten years, you had better think of something quick.”

After the initial shock and disappointment in their daughter’s lack of financial responsibility, Malika’s parents did a little research on ways in which they could help their debt ridden daughter.  What they discovered would not only help Malika financially, but it would hopefully give her a lesson about life without the finer things to which the young woman had obviously become accustomed without their knowledge.

“You got me out of paying back my loans?”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Malika?  But that’s not the way the world works.”

Malika didn’t like the way that sounded.  “What do I have to do, go to some tiny little town with only one stoplight?”

“There is a program for nurses as well as for teachers that gives you the opportunity to teach on a reservation and your loans will be forgiven.  It’s a year for year deal.  You took out loans for four years, so you must agree to teach for four years.”

Malika stared at her parents in disgust and disbelief.  “You have got to be joking.  You mean an Indian reservation?”

“Yes, Malika, and this is no joke, nor are your loans.”

Malika wished her parents would just pay off the loans for her, but she knew they would not.

“You might just like it, Malika.  Weren’t you the girl who had wanted to change the world?”

Sure she had, but that was before she had slipped her feet into a pair of four hundred dollar sandals.  “Where is this place?”

“The reservation is chosen for you and the one that has been chosen for you, my dear, is in South Dakota.”

Malika was in shock.  “South Dakota?  Guess I can’t commute.”

Malika’s mother smiled and shook her head.  “You have two weeks, little girl.”

***

The plane carrying Malika to the godforsaken place that was to be her home for the next four years touched down in a city of less than one hundred thousand people, even though it was the second largest city in the state of South Dakota.  She missed Philadelphia already.  She pulled out the brochure about the area and as she looked out the window as the plane descended, she noticed the Black Hills Mountain Range.  The hills were not really black.  They just looked black from a distance because they were covered in a dense forest of trees.  The mountains seemed to have come out of nowhere, rising up from the plains that was for the most part flat.

There were a lot of Indian reservations in this part of the country, Malika had learned, and Native Americans had inhabited the region since the beginning of time.  It was the Lakota Sioux who were the last to claim the land, having arrived from Minnesota in the eighteenth century and driving out other tribes and pushing them westward.  They called the hills HeSapa, or Black Mountains, because of their darkened appearance.

Malika was fascinated by the Black Hills and she continued to stare as the plane made its way to the airport terminal.  The airport was small and it took no time at all for her to gather her bags.  It was awhile, however, before a taxi was willing to drive her to the reservation.  The drivers knew their taxies would be unoccupied on the return trip to Rapid City, and that meant unpaid, and taking a traveler one way barely paid for the gas.  Malika waited for nearly an hour before an older gentleman offered a taxi ride to her destination.  Pine Ridge Reservation was to be her new home, and she learned more about it than she cared to from her overly talkative driver.

“Pine Ridge has always been a hotbed of turmoil.  It still is, but not like it was years ago.  Tragedy is the only thing that place has ever known.  It’s a damn shame is what it is.”

“What happened there?”

The driver looked at Malika in his rearview mirror.  So young, this child.  “You ever heard of a ghost dance?”

“No.”

“The Ghost Dance was a movement begun by the prophet of peace, Jack Wilson.  He prophesied a world of peace and a peaceful end to the white man’s expansion.  All he wanted was a life of clean living, honest living, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans.  But the Ghost Dance was not appreciated by the white man, my dear.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t rightly say.  Probably thought it was some type of voodoo or something.”  The man sighed heavily and Malika wondered if he was one of them, a Native American.  “You see, my dear, it is often that what we do not understand frightens us the most.  Have you heard of a place called Wounded Knee?”

“I guess not.”  The truth was that Malika remembered nothing in her history classes about the Native Americans and it was not for lack of attention paid.  She loved history.

“The Wounded Knee Massacre was in 1890 when the United States Army killed nearly two hundred of our people to put an end to the Ghost Dances.  A group of Sioux Indians sought sanctuary at Pine Ridge but the families were intercepted on their way by the Seventh Cavalry of the U.S. Army and killed in cold blood.  It was like shooting ducks in a barrel.  Women, children, it didn’t matter to the United States Army.”

Malika was beginning to enjoy the old man’s tale and she stared out the window at the Black Hills and the land surrounding.  She tried to imagine a war going on here, but it was difficult for her.  Things seemed so normal now.  “So then it ended and each side went their separate ways?”