ONE
ARIA
Selfish, negligent, irresponsible, reckless, are just a few out of the many words I could use to describe the man I call father, but I would save my anger for a later date. Right now, what is more important is dealing with the issue on ground.
“You told me you were over that,” my mother wailed.
“Well, I am, but I have to clear the pending debts. You didn’t think they would just disappear did you?” father says nonchalantly.
My mum and dad are opposites. Mum is selfless and loving, especially when it involves her family. How she managed to fall in love and marry a man like my father is still something that baffles me till date.
“Two hundred thousand dollars Harry! How the fuck did you manage to gamble such a large sum? What in hell were you thinking?” she screamed.
“You most definitely wouldn’t be using that tone if the odds had been in my favor,” he says defensively.
“That’s the problem Harry, the odds never favor you, yet you keep trying. There are a thousand and one things you could have done with that money rather than gamble it away…”
I listened to the two of them argue non-stop, and I just feel bad for my mum mostly. She doesn’t deserve a man like Harold Edgar, she deserved better. Year in and year out I see her work her ass out to keep the family running while my father goes about pumping large sums into his dirty gambling games with hopes that someday he would ‘hit it big’, and those were his exact words.
Many times, I wonder why my mum will not just leave his sorry ass. Now we are being threatened by the loan sharks. Can things get any worse?
There is only so much I and my elder sister Audrey can contribute to the family considering Audrey has been saving up for college, and I earn little to nothing.
We have lived in penury since I can remember, and it’s all thanks to the man I call father, who doesn’t feel remorse for what he’d just done. We are in this mess because of him. It was his mess, yet we had to somehow find a way to clean it up for him, and frankly speaking, there is absolutely no way we would raise two hundred grand in three weeks.
We have sold out almost everything we had. The dining set, sound system, washer, and many other things had been auctioned to pay off dad’s previous debts, and even the wall where the TV used to hang now housed an old-fashioned wall clock that only told the time correctly twice a day. The seats in the living room were worn out and tattered, the drapes were faded from years of washing. Nothing about this place can be described as beautiful.
Audrey tapped her foot on the ground noisily, a sign that she too was irritated, but neither mum nor dad noticed in their heated argument. I notice the lines of worry on her face, and I am sure her thoughts were similar to mine. Audrey is dad’s favorite and she looks just like him while I take after mom. She has his dark curly hair, baby blue eyes and stands at six feet tall, while I take mum’s blonde hair and hazel eyes, and I’m a good six inches shorter than Audrey.
A sharp knock on the door caused all of us to turn sharply in its direction. The knock sounded a second time, but more impatient.
“Open up Harry boy, we know you are in there,” a deep voice resounded from the other end of the door, and I feel my heart jump to my mouth. My mom’s eyes widened in horror and Audrey jumped off her seat. My dad is obviously confused, his eyes keep darting from the door to the window, as if thinking of a way of escape.
“Okay now, I’m coming in,” The voice says, angrily shaking the door knob, and then we hear a loud bang. He was going to kick the door in. One. Two. Three. The door gave way and mum rushes to hug me and Audrey. She is shaking all over, just like me and Audrey.
Three hefty men pushed their way in. One of them grabbed my dad’s shirt while the second lunged a hard blow into his ribs. My mum screams “Please stop,” tears spilling out of her eyes.
Our small living room could barely contain all three of them. The shortest of them would be at least six feet and four inches. They looked scary, and very intimidating. Facial hairs that had not been shaved for many months made them look really rough, with tattoos all over their very muscular arms.
The third man made eye contact with me, he had to be their leader. While my mum and Audrey were wailing as the men continue to throw punches at my father, I didn’t make a sound, but rather stared at them with contempt.
Their leader is holding a small knife in his left hand and when he starts to walk towards us, my mum shields us behind her. He raised his hands to stop his men from hitting dad, who already had blood running down his nose.
Their boss reached behind mum to pull me out. I winced at how hard his fingers felt against my skin, but I don’t let him see just how scared I am.
“Feisty huh?” he smirked.
“Please, not my daughter,” my mum shrieked “Leave her alone. We will get you your money, I promise,” she wailed.
“When?” he thunders, still holding me tightly by my arms. I try to wriggle my arms free, but you can guess how that went. I was only succeeding in hurting myself and making him even angrier.
“Plea...se, ju..st give us time,” mum stutters, hot tears running down her cheeks.
“Time?” he thunders “Did you just say time? Do I look like a clown to you?” spittle flies from his mouth as he screams at my mum, and at this point, I wish I had superpowers, because only if I possessed that would I be able to overpower these men.
He turns back to my father and I watched in horror as his knife went flying in father’s direction, only slightly missing his left ear to hit the wall behind him. One slight movement from my father, and that would have been it.
“I wouldn’t miss a second time,” he warned before letting me go roughly. He picks up the knife again, then grabs my father and hauled him roughly to the floor, placing his left knee on his back with my father’s arms splurged on the hard floor. He drives his knife into my dad’s pinky finger, and father screamed with pain as blood popped from his hands to the already dirty center rug.
“No..” mum rushes to him, but another man grabs her from behind.
“You monster, what have you done?” she screeched.
The boss hissed, then picked up my father’s finger, wrapped it in a little handkerchief, and inserted it into his pockets.
“I’ll just keep that as a souvenir,” he flashed his rotten teeth, tapping his pockets. “Or maybe I can keep two…” he points the knife at my father’s ring finger.
“Stop, stop, stop, I have some money,” Audrey screamed. The three men turn to her.
“Now that’s what I wanna hear,” the boss says in a cocky voice before rising to his feet. Audrey dashed to our room and returns in a flash with her piggy bank. I closed my eyes in pain as I watched her hand it over to the man with shaky hands. Audrey has had that piggy bank since she was a child! And she has been saving up for college since I can remember. Now she was just going to give it all away.
The man scratched his beards before snatching the piggybank out of Audrey’s arms.
“How much is in there?” he asks.
“I’m not sure, maybe ten thousand,” she says.
The three men start to laugh “Ten grand?” The boss clutched his stomach and laughed even harder.
“So, what happens to my balance?” he quirks a brow.
“We’ll raise your money, but please spare my father,” Audrey cries.
The boss turns to me again, then walks towards me, his eyes sizing me from head to toe. “I like this one,” he declares “I want all that feistiness in my bedroom,”
I gulped down the bile forming in my throat and scrunched my nose as the smell of cigarette and alcohol in his breath made my stomach churn. I would like to spit in his face, but I’m fully aware of the implications of that.
He winks at me before making for the door “Three weeks, or you are a dead man Harry boy,” He huffed, whistling to his thugs who followed behind him, carrying my sister’s life savings with them.
My mum and Audrey rushes to where my dad is laying on the floor, and mum pulls him to hug him to her chest, crying profusely, but my own tears wouldn’t form. I just know I have to think of a way to get us out of this mess.
“Ouch..” my dad flinched as mum cleans the amputated area with saline solution. His hand was swelling already and I fear it may already be contaminated. My mum applies less pressure and once she is done, she starts to cover it in gauze wrap.Audrey returns from the kitchen with a bag of ice and lays it on the table while my mother wraps his entire palms in a waterproof bag and goes on to dip it inside the bag of ice. The care she showed this man, the feelings she had for him, the love she showered him with her every touch.I’m still trying to process all that happened this afternoon. My father lost his tiny finger today, who knows what may happen tomorrow? Or the day after? How do we raise a hundred and ninety grand within three weeks? Even if we sold this whole house and everything in it, it wouldn’t amount to anything, and where would we live after that? I don’t even have a penny saved up anywhere, and it hurt to see Audrey give out her
“You are not going to sell your body to pay off dad’s debts especially not to that mongrel,” Audrey tries to reassure me.“The fact that he would even suggest it is appalling,” I paced the lengths of our small room. Small as it is, it happens to be the only place I find comfort in this house. I have shared this room with Audrey since we were little, but we learned to respect each other’s spaces.We decorated our sections differently and my side of the room is not as colorful as Audrey’s. We have two separate beds on each side of the room. Audrey always has a pink or multicolored bedspread laid, her medium-sized teddy bear sitting comfortably on the bed, a small reading table where she keeps all her favorite books, and a reading lamp by the side.On Audrey’s reading table is an old family picture. Mum held me cradled in her arms, with dad’s arms around her waist. They looked happy and so much in love. Audrey i
SLADEListening isn’t one of my favorite things. I learned to turn a deaf ear to a lot of things, particularly if it is coming from the werewolf council or any of the pack elders. It gets irritating having to listen to the same sermon over and over again when I am even more worried about the situation than they are. My nights are filled with nightmares, and my days with unending pressure.I didn’t grow Dark wolf Pack to be the strongest, largest, and most feared pack only for it to be taken away from my bloodline because of me. I made Dark Wolf Pack what it is today. My efforts brought us here, and I’m not scared of dying, far from it. In fact, if I die, I die a noble man, I die because of the sacrifice I had to make for my pack. I accomplished what I planned for my pack within six years of my reign. Something my father failed to achieve in his twenty-eight years on seat.I took on the role of alpha of Dark Wolf P
“I’ve been waiting for you, Alpha,” The red head sprawled on my couch licked her lips and caressed her thighs seductively. She is wearing black lingerie with matching black pencil heels, batting her eyelids at me like a cat.I grabbed her roughly by the arms and yanked her off my seats, anger rolling off me, but she squirms like a little school girl who’s just been offered cotton candy.“You know I like it rough, alpha,” she giggles.“What the fuck are you still doing here?” I barked. She flinched, Maybe I raised my voice a little too much, but I made it crystal clear before leaving this morning that I didn’t want her here when I got back.I had a one-night stand with the red head once, and that’s all it was supposed to be, that was our deal. Her name, I can’t even remember, but she wouldn’t give me breathing space after that night. She isn’t from my pack, I know better than to
ARIAMy eyes scanned the bathroom for the tenth time, checking to make sure I didn’t leave any spot unattended. It looked perfect to me but I doubt Mrs. Brown would be pleased with the result. She is never pleased with anything and I learned that within two days of working with her. I spent the last four hours scrubbing this particular toilet because Mrs. Brown wanted it perfect, as it was situated in the master’s bedroom of her mansion, and she spends most of her time in here than in her actual bedroom according to her.I looked longingly at the bathroom again. What I would give to have a proper shower in a bathroom so luxurious. It is even bigger than the living room in my house!Sweat trickled down my forehead, chest, under arms, and even my thighs. I’m exhausted. Within the last three days, I have taken up all kinds of jobs I could get my hands on to make money, and so has Audrey and
I thought Pablo and his gang were the scariest-looking men I had laid my eyes on in a long time, but the man standing adjacent to me reminded me of Hercules. He stood a reasonable distance away, yet one could easily see he was brawny. His well-defined muscles hugged his shirt that had a few buttons opened and the top and the sleeves rolled up as if he had come prepared for a fight, but his hands were tucked casually into his pant pockets.“Who the fuck are you?” Pablo brawled.“Leave the girl alone,” He repeated, his tone was quiet but commanding.I take the opportunity to wriggle my arms again in an attempt to get them free, but Pablo’s grip tightened even more. His colleague had released me to move towards the stranger, cracking his knuckles as he did.“You have a chance to turn around and walk away like you didn’t see anything,” Pablo’s colleague warned, but his words do not move this stranger
“You don’t need to, I can walk,” I doubled my steps, but his strides were way longer than mine, and in no time, I had to occasionally jug to meet up with his pace. There was no use being so strong-headed. Pablo could still be anywhere around here watching me.“Are you not interested in knowing what we need you for?” Marcel apparently wasn’t backing down. I’m not exactly short, but I feel like an ant walking beside him.The offer sounds tempting, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. Things just never worked in my favor. Nothing I ever did or hoped for went the way I wanted them and I gave up dreaming a long time ago. It’s almost like the universe worked against me.“What is it I have to do?” I asked casually. My ears were itching, and my mind was trained to receive whatever ridiculous thing he had to say.“We need an heir that only you can provide!” he rasped.&ldquo
The rumbling sound from my stomach served as a reminder that it needed food. Since I wasn't cleaning for Mrs. brown today, I had to return home earlier than usual, something I wasn't exactly happy about. Being around the four walls of that house was torture, the air around the gloomy environment could easily drive one into depression, and father's surly attitude made it even worse. These days, I hated seeing him. The mere thought of him angered me, and if I had anywhere else to be rather than in that house, then I would gladly go there.Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of friends. No one wants to mingle with a low life like me, rejection was nothing new to me and I can't say I am exactly the friendly type. I learned to keep to myself and maintain my own space as a child because no one ever really wanted to be seen with me.Did I get male advances? Yes, a lot. Nine out of the ten men I meet just want to get into my panties, but I learned quickly to differentiate bet