Authors: Rachel Rae
Within
WITHIN
By
Rachel Rae
ZitrO Publications
PO Box 25594
Fayetteville, NC 28314
919 904 8414
This is a work of fiction. Any character references or likenesses to persons living or dead are completely coincidental. Actual people and places have been added to give the story a sense of reality.
Copyright© 2016 ZitrO Publications/
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this book may be reproduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written consent from both the author and publisher, ZitrO Publications, except brief quotes used in reviews, interviews, or magazines.
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Chapter One
COURTNEY
I sat in a huge brown leather chair across from my first patient of the day, my niece Krystle, a 19-year-old young woman who was once very attractive. However, with all the hard times and medication she has recently been taking, it made her seem po’ looking and beat down. Her once curvy body that had any male look twice now looked saggy and unmanaged. Per her mother and her father’s, who is my oldest brother, request; they asked me to evaluate her for her court hearing that would be coming up in about nine months. They wanted to try to persuade the judge that she had some type of illness and that was the reason she killed her fiancé Bishop, so like a good aunt, I agreed and here we are. I listened to her talk the same speech she’s been saying for a week now and honestly, I was tired of hearing it.
“They say the first step is admitting and I admit what I did was wrong…But what you have to understand is it had to be done. See Bishop…Bishop thought, he was a player or a pimp in real life, when in all actuality he was a FLABB.”
“And what’s a FLABB?” I asked, doing air quotes.
“Freeloading…Ass…Baby…Bitch,” she said directly. “He was the most disrespectful man I’d ever known and on top of him hittin’ on me, do you know he had the nerve to cheat on me too? That would drive any woman to kill, I’m telling you, Auntie.”
“So that’s what drove you to kill the man you said you were in love with for two years? Why didn’t you just leave?” I asked, crossing my left leg over my right.
“But it wasn’t just me though; the other girls he cheated on me with had their hands in it too! But I’m the only one being charged. Don't you see there’s something wrong with that? It’s a set up!”
“It’s not a setup, Krystle,” I said calmly.
“Oh yeah, it’s not, huh? Then why am I the only one being blamed?” She questioned me, pounding her fist into her hand and then sitting back on the sofa.
“They can’t find any of the girls nowhere, not the address you gave or the names. I’m just saying—” I began, but she quickly cut me off.
“Oh, so y’all trying to say I made this shit up, Auntie? Is that what it is? I am not crazy! They came to me tellin me what Bishop was doing! I didn’t go lookin’ for them. Okay…okay…honestly, I did tell him to meet me at the Motel 6 on 610, but I didn’t think they would do that to him. I thought we were just going to confront him, you know be like ahh-haa we caught you; then he would choose me and we go back home.”
“But it didn’t turn out that way, Krys, Bishop died because of what you did.”
“I didn’t do it Auntie Courtney; it was those girls he cheated on me with!”
I watched as my niece begin to cry uncontrollably, then abruptly she stopped to wipe her nose on her sleeve, only to start talking again with no signs of the previous tears.
“I’m gon’ tell you okay? They both came at two separate times at first, we never all met up at once until two weeks ago, when I called Bishop and told him to meet me at the Motel 6. Akira is about my height, five nine, with big, pretty, dark brown eyes. I could look in her eyes and see exactly why Bishop would fall for a girl like that, she was gorgeous, and the ringleader, might I say. She was the one that came up with the plan to get him to meet me.”
“And what about the other girl?” I asked my niece, watching her sit completely still in the chair, while closing her eyes a time or two trying to remember, it seemed.
“FiFi,” she laughed. “FiFi would act up; she was the one to calm down all the situations when Akira and I clashed. She would either make some kind of weird joke or do something so different that it would cause us to laugh and focus on what we originally planned on doing at first.”
“Wait Krystle, I thought you said y'all didn’t all come together until the Motel 6.”
“That’s right, but we stayed on the phone constantly, sometimes almost all night until Bishop would come home to me, after he left one of the their houses.”
“Explain please.”
“Come on, Aunt Courtney. Say for instance he would tell me he was about to leave and go to work or some lie like that, right? I would act cool, run to the window, watch him back up the car and leave out the parking lot. I’ll run to my cell phone and call Akira first; then she would call FiFi. We’ll be on the phone until there would be a knock on one or the other’s door. He was just a dog,” she said, shaking her head.
I heard a faint tap come from the huge, wall-length mirror, behind the sofa my niece was sitting on. She let out a small chuckle at what seemed like a memory, before the light tap came again, “Krys, would you like something to drink? I know your mouth has to be dry,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Yeah, that would be good.”
“I have Sprite, Coke, coffee, water, and tea, which one do you want?”
“Surprise me; you know, Bishop used to surprise me. I miss our happier days; I miss him. I wish I could go back and stop what we had done to him, you know? Rewind… But that’s not how life’s set up, I suppose.” Krystle sighed, looking down at her hands on her lap.
“Nope, we can’t go back even if we tried; I’ll go get your drink.” I grunted, standing up, patting her on her knee, and then headed out the door.
I walked about a foot to the next door labeled “Maintenance”, took a single key out my jean jacket pocket, unlocked the door and walked in. “That key is not for you to use when you want to use it, Tony, damn!” I said, snatching it from his hand. “How long have you been in here listening to what we’ve been talking about anyways? You know this conversation is supposed to be confidential, even if you are the parent.”
“So? I'm her father and I've been here long enough to know that if my child gets up on the stand in November talking like that, they are going to throw the damn book at her! Why don’t you ask some more questions about where them thot girls stay Courtney? Do you want her to go to jail?”
“First of all, lower your voice, Tony; it’s a two-way mirror not soundproof. Second, have I ever came to your job while you’re building houses and shit, telling you to use the hammer instead of the damn screwdriver? Hell no, I don’t, so don’t come over here telling me what I should and should not be doing when it comes down to my job; I’ve been doing this for many years now. I got this handled, big bro, please just go ahead and go away for now.”
He began to walk out, but not before asking a question, which I knew he was going to do. “Aye sis, you think my baby has a chance of getting off with an insanity plea? I mean she was doing real good before her mother and I made her terminate that pregnancy. Maybe we made a bad decision, but she was only nineteen and I wanted her to be… We didn't want her to be like us, nineteen and trying to raise a baby, you know?”
I walked up to my big brother who seemed so broken right now. I’ve had a bunch of parents in the past, wondering if they could have done something different with their kids, and questioning themselves. I just told him the same thing I told other parents before, “Tony, if that's true, then the one thing we all have is free will, we can guide and direct our children the way we would like them to go, and sometimes it just doesn't work out like that. Don't blame yourself, we got this, okay?”
He gave me a quick hug before glancing back through the two-way mirror at Krystle, then leaving out. I grabbed a Sprite out of the mini fridge, took in a deep breath, and then made my way back to my office where my niece was sitting.
“Here’s a soda, who are you texting?” I asked, handing her the drink.
“FiFi.”
“Well, where is she? Is she planning on turning herself in?”
“Auntie please, she hasn't even responded yet. I asked her to please call me, because I'm looking real crazy to everyone and I don’t like this feeling, Can we just go? I really don't want to talk anymore today.”
“We don’t have much time; you know that, don’t you? Your hearing is soon; I know I'm requiring a lot from you at this time and I know it’s hard, but I need you to help me, just as much as you need me to help you. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try, can we go now?”
I nodded my head yes while holding out my hand, waiting on her to grab it as she always had, from the time she was just a little girl. She looked up from her phone and smiled, grabbed my hand, then stood up.
“That’s my big girl.” I smiled, pulling her towards my right side, putting my arm around her shoulder.
We started to walk out when her phone rang and she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Hello?” she spoke.
I heard someone speaking loudly on the other end, I couldn't get the whole conversation but the little I did get, made me snatch the phone from her hand.
“Stop textin’ my fuckin phone with that bullshit! Text me again and you gon’ have some problems!” I heard the girl say as I put the phone to my ear.
“Excuse me, who is this?”
“Bitch, you know who this is, the same number you been textin’ with that bullshit! Stop textin’ my phone!”
The next thing I heard was the dial tone.
I looked at my niece, then handed her back her cell, “Which one was that?”
“Akira,” she said, lowering her head as she started to walk again.