CHAPTER 19
I was yelling bloody murder, when Maddox tried to sacrifice me to the pool gods yet again. I was just starting to dry off, when I realized I was in Madd’s arms. Duke was just returning from the house when Trent called him for a glass of punch.
"Put me down," I was laughing because his fingers were tickling my sides, "I swear to god, I’ll fill your backside with gun powder…"
"Madd just let her go… Her voice is fucking annoying." Maddox’s head turned to Duke. His hand was wrapped around Michelle’s waist and they both were sipping on the punch. He was laughing on something that Michelle whispered in his ear. He was doing it on purpose, he liked to hurt me, I think he even received a sort of pleasure from it. Duke’s lips met her cheek.
"If only a look could kill…" I looked up at Madd’s smiling mouth. He let me go and I landed on the edge of the pool.
"I’d be the perfect killer." He sent me a warm smile before turning around. In a blink of an eye, he was in the pool. Who was laughing now? Nobody messed with Elle Morrison. When he swam up, his black hair all over his face, Trent let out a loud roar like laugh.
"I warned you." He looked somewhat proud. Nobody had looked at me with those kind of eyes. I didn’t know how to respond. "Come on babe, join us for a drink." I saw Duke’s curious look and noticed his hand tensing on Michelle’s hip. Trent extended a hand of red cup towards me as I approached. I knew exactly what Duke was thinking, I knew exactly what he remembered. He remembered my words before his knockout. He was not allowed to call me babe, in fact no one was.
"Babe?" I took the cup eying him curiously.
"You’d prefer to be called shorty?" I smiled into the drink. No, I preferred to be called Elle. Trent muffled my partly dried hair and received a frown from me. I just couldn’t kill him, not when he was giving me his dimpled smile. I dampened my lips with the drink, it was a hundred times better than the vodka which was lonely standing at the very end of the table.
"No, no, no…" Maddox ran to me taking a deep breath, "And once again- no!" He took the plastic cup out of my fingers, leaving me quite confused on his actions. Wasn’t he the one who was willing to get me drunk? He shook his finger in my face. "You’ll drink this." He shoved the bottle of vodka in my hand. "Ten thousand bucks, shorty. Can you handle them?"
"Of course I can…" I mouthed before taking the cap off the bottle and raising it to my lips. It took everything that was in me to swallow the burning liquid. I had to force myself to keep it down. Or maybe I couldn’t.
"Good girl…" His forearm lied on my head, making water drops from his sleeve roll down my face.
"You’re really pushing your luck." I smiled sweetly and my elbow made a contact with his ribs. His hand shot to his side, while he murmured something. Just a tad harder and I would’ve broken his ribs.
"Why you little…" He had bent forward in pain. That should teach him a lesson. Never pick on the shorter people. Maddox was about to throw his hands around my neck, but Chris got in the middle of us.
"Okay guys break it up!" He was waving his arms practically in our faces. I had to step back just so he wouldn’t break my nose. "This is no fucking Simpsons cartoon…" Me and Madd shared a glance before we both nodded. Great minds think alike.
"Chris, Chris, Chris…" Madd’s hand snaked around Chris’ shoulder. I adjusted the purple towel just to keep it from falling off my shoulders as I watched Maddox pull Chris to the pool.
"Is he going to do what I think he’s going to do?" Trent’s voice was full of doubt, but in the same time he was radiating amusement all over the place.
"Yup." I popped the ‘p’ as I watched Chris trying his best to get out of Maddox’s arms. Was I just seeing things or he just bit him? The slender build was faster than Chris and even with a lot of alcohol in his system, he managed to avoid the next hits Chris sent. Either way he was just a few seconds away from touching the bottom of the pool. Never, ever, ever get in the middle of two assassins. And then there was the grand finally, spatter was all around the place. Michelle jumped back when she saw the water coming at her. I chuckled, but as soon as I saw Duke’s dreadful stare I burst into even bigger laughter. I was not the one to back down. He wanted war, I was willing to give him one. He had tampered with my dignity and I didn’t give a single damn about my conscience yelling at me and my heart stabbing me from inside. Elle Morrison was not the one to bare with ridicule.
"Duke, what are you so worked up about?" Duke raised his frosty eyes to Trent, letting out a small ‘huh’. "You’ve been sending daggers all afternoon."
"He and Elle just came to a conclusion of their dislike for one another." Michelle spoke in a sweet voice as she was wiped her wet legs with a napkin. Since when did she have a saying in the matter? She should’ve known when to close her pie hole, before I sewed it shut.
"Is that so?" Trent looked down on me and saw my killer face. Give me anything, even a goddamn wristwatch and a full access to ravage her body and I’ll figure out how to do it. I’d killed people with even smaller things.
"If I had a good side, this would not be the way to get on it, horse face." Her eyebrows shot up and her lips parted. She looked at me with wide eyes, so did everybody else. What? What did I do? Please, don’t say nobody else saw the resemblance between her and a horse. The smile alone gave her away. Of course, I was not competing for a place in Miss University, I knew I wouldn’t get in, but let’s be honest, neither would she. If she would’ve been a good person, maybe I’d even say she was pretty, but now- no.
"Excuse me?" She cheeped. Had I touched a nerve? So I guess I had.
"You’re excused."
"Elle…" Trent’s lips were so close to my ear, I could even feel his warm breath. "A little more and you’ll make the glass bleed…" I looked down on my hands and saw them wrapped around the bottle, if the bottle would have been alive, it would already be strangled by now pleading for mercy this whole time. He took the bottle away, if anybody watched the show, they saw how much effort Trent put in the matter. I was not giving up on the fight that easily. I was talking both about Michelle and the bottle. When he had ripped the bottle out of my hands, he placed it on the table and took my hands in his, looking me deep in the eye.
"Who’s up for a game?" There goes Maddox- saving the day. Every curious pair of eyes traveled away from us and lied on the wet male. "Gather all you shit-heads for a game of I never!"
"Oh come on, Madd… We’ve been playing it since we turned seventeen…" Chris exclaimed pulling himself out of the pool.
"And we will keep playing it until we’re fucking sixty. Take your places fuckers!" Maddax winked meeting my eyes. I shot him a grateful smile as my lips made a ‘thank you’.
"What’s up with you two?" He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, revealing my size two ear gauge. "Hey, I didn’t know you had holes in your ears." He brushed my hair behind my other ear to make sure the other also had a hole in it. Actually it had six holes but only one of them was a gauge.
"I was a really messed up kid in my days." I forced a smile, hearing laughter coming from the group of people who were getting drunk just by playing a simple game. "As for Duke… He thinks I’m a serial killer." I smiled through the pain. Trent’s hazel eyes blended with a shade of confusion.
"Shads!" I turned to see Chris looking over his shoulder, "Take your lady and come over. This game’s no fun without you."
Trent looked at me with his eyebrow raised in question. He was making sure that I had nothing against it, so I just shook my head in reply. I really had the world against it, I was playing only with my victims and nothing else and now I’m throwing myself over head and heels in a stupid game. You’ve dropped from highest heights to lowest ends, Morrison. Thank you, my lovely inner voice, I know.
"We all know the drill. If you don’t agree to the statement, you drink the shit out of your glass! I’ll start. I’ve never drank ‘blowjob’."
"Now you’re just willing to get us drunk, Madd." A smiling Patrick raised his cup to his lips, so did everyone else, of course except for me. I think the first time I drank something alcoholic was when Duke moved in and even then it was a crappy beer. I was not the alcohol loving person like everyone else around here.
"I’ve never been to Russia." Chris spoke wrapping his arm around some girl with short blond hair. Trent took a drink from his cup, looking at me with a smile. I took the glass from him and reflected his previous action. We were the only ones to take a mouthful. In that moment I felt superior.
"I’ve never watched porn," Trent stated. Once again everyone took a shot. Even me. Remembering the experience… it was not pleasant. I was forced to watch it whilst doing my job, my victim was pleasing himself off in front of the tv while I laid a bullet in his head. Honestly, that was the only time when I got sick doing what I do.
"My turn," Duke spoke up, "I’ve never killed someone."
"Oh come on, man," Trent started, "I want to get drunk, not fucking sober,"
"Man, you have to come off your secrets." He said with a wide smile in his face. He was watching me. Madd, Michelle and Trent took a sip of their cups. Duke was looking confusedly every each and one of them, and even more confused he was when Trent gave me his glass without another question. I drank.
"I killed my goldfish," Trent shrugged his shoulders. "Mom said Sparky wouldn’t make it without food for a week, but I didn’t believe her. Now I believe." Let’s just pretend Duke didn’t use the certain word someone and a goldfish was not a certain someone.
"A duck." Madd said simply. Everyone’s eyes were now on me. Fuck you Duke Jones, really fuck you. I was not used to curse even in my head, but now I was yelling every single cuss word I was aware off. Of course not out loud.
"I’ve killed a lot…" I sighed. I had to come off clean, I told I had no secrets from him and I was not a liar. Fine, I was, but sometimes I said the truth. Rarely, very rarely, Morrison. Fine, jeez, give me a break. I smiled seeing everyone’s shocked physiognomies. "I’m a Call of Duty addict." I shrugged my shoulders. That was not a lie.
"Oh… Me too…" Suddenly Chris raised his glass to his lips. Everyone had forgotten about Michelle, who was nervously nibbling on her cup under Duke’s strong arm.
"Michelle? What have you killed?" She raised anger filled eyes to me and I greeted her with a pleasant smile. Oh sweet victory.
"What? Oh… No one, I just wanted a drink." Cheis and his girl laughed, so did Duke and the rest of the group. I was starting to get the fuzzy feeling, like everyone around here was a goddamn target, it specially Michelle. I was drunk and that was the goddamn bottom line.
After a couple of statements, Michelle received a phone call and left Duke all alone. Oh that poor thing. His girl bailed on him in the middle of a party, right when I was drunk enough to redo the favor. Most of the people got those annoying giggles when they were intoxicated, well not me. I got rather aggressive. I decided to ditch the game and go to the table while Maddox was too busy getting himself drunk to notice my action. I had poured the rest of the vodka in the punch bowl, I knew I couldn’t make myself take another glass of alcohol, but I just loved money. What was wrong with a little cheating?
"You’re drunk." A deep voice stated behind me.
"You think?" I turned to face him with a wide smile. Oh how he deserved to be shot, right then and there.
I filled the red cup with orange juice. Either I was too drunk or he wasn’t too sober himself. "Now you’re satisfied? Pull another stunt like that and I’ll make sure you won’t even be able to squeak." He was dead silent. Just then I noticed him smirking and swaying his head to a song Patrick had put on. It was their song, a Carnival of Rust song, one I had never heard before, or I had but I was just too drunk to remember it.
He was singing along and making me snort. I took a mouthful from the cup and walked past him. I was not in the mood of watching him please his ego from making me suffer. His fingers snaked around my upper arm and he pulled me back, rather painfully.
The towel which had been keeping me warm the whole evening fell to my ankles as he pulled me closer, not caring for the people around us.
"If you don’t want to dance with the dead, I suggest you take your filthy hands off me." I hissed. If he would’ve been a smart person, he would’ve listened to me, but no, he wasn’t. He leaned closer. Why the sudden change of thoughts, hmm? When he was just about to touch my lips with his, he was forced to bend in pain. A knee in one’s groin was a painful and nefarious move to make, but he deserved it, oh god how he deserved it. No matter how I wanted to taste his lips, I would not go under my dignity and kiss a man who had just insulted me. He groaned as his hands traveled to his crotch.
"Are you fucking insane?" He hissed, looking up at me.
"And you were doubting it?" I splashed the orange juice in his face, making him say bye bye to his eyesight. At least for a moment. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed our little duet, and no, they were drunkenly talking to each other about things I didn’t find interesting. Duke was already straightening his back, his face still grimacing in pain and I realized I was not letting this all go that easily. I drove my fist formed hand against his cheek with such force he fell to the ground with a loud thud. "You’re a fucking ass, Duke."