Beautiful Escape Read online

  BEAUTIFUL ESCAPE

  By Jenna Storm

  © 2014 All Rights Reserved

  ALEXA

  Nobody ever leaves our church.

  Especially not someone like me. And yet that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

  As I slowly open the window of my bedroom and feel the night air pouring inside, blowing the soft white curtains back, I’m struck by how cold and alone I feel.

  I pick up the backpack and toss it over the window’s ledge, hearing it drop to the ground below. It’s pitch black outside, and there are no floodlights on this side of the house. I know where all the motion-sensing lights are located, and I also know how to avoid them.

  That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous, though.

  Father’s always been a light sleeper, and he’s also been known to stay up all night when he’s having a revelation. If tonight is one of those evenings, then he may hear the sounds I’m making and find me out.

  My whole body shivers when I think of what that would mean, what would happen to me.

  You’re his daughter, but that won’t save you. No, it might even make the punishment that much worse.

  My stomach lurches and I feel a wave of dizziness come and go. Then, without waiting to lose my nerve, I climb out the window and let myself drop to the hard ground below, right next to my backpack.

  The ground smells earthy and it’s cool to the touch.

  I shoulder the backpack and start to run, keeping as low to the ground as I can. I take aim for the most unprotected corner of the compound.

  Between my house and the fence, there’s a good mile and a half of ground to cover. Although there are sentries walking the length and breadth of the church property, I happen to know their patterns, because one of the sentries on duty is Joseph, my best friend.

  He wasn’t supposed to tell me how they did their jobs, but when he tried to convince me to come out at night and lay with him, he revealed everything about their security detail.

  Joseph told me how to avoid the guards in hopes that it might make me feel I could be safe in coming out with him at night to do whatever dirty things he had in mind, but I refused anyway.

  I’m running now, past the small, darkened homes of the people that I’ve known my whole life. In this blackness, all of the houses look the same, and they look like shells, like empty husks with no life at all inside of them.

  I’m sweating even in the chill night air, and my breathing is ragged.

  The sneakers I have on are old and tattered, because Father doesn’t believe in children wearing new clothes—it’s a sign of a prideful, stiff-necked lot. Instead, we wear those things that others have cast off, or we sew our own garments, keeping them simple and unadorned.

  As a result, the clothes I’m wearing are ripped and tattered. But at least they look a little bit like clothes that people see outside in the “normal” world—the world of sin, as Father calls it.

  It’s where I’m trying to get to, if I can.

  As I come around the corner of a house not far from the fence line, I suddenly see a flashlight beam nearby, bouncing to and fro.

  I can’t believe it. My breath catches in my chest and I pull up short. There’s the burst of static from a walkie-talkie, as the dark silhouette of a sentry moves towards me.

  Nobody was supposed to be here at this time of night. Joseph specifically told me that this quadrant of the grounds would be unguarded, because this was near where he wanted to meet me if I’d ever agreed to sneak out with him.

  But that discussion was some months ago, now, and I realize only too late that they must’ve changed their routines and patterns.

  Whatever the reason, I’m caught.

  The sentry turns his flashlight beam in my direction, and it lands squarely on me, blinding me for a moment.

  I hold up my hands in front of my face, squinting, trying desperately to think up an excuse, knowing there is none. I’m wearing a backpack full of clothes, and I have money in my pockets and outsiders clothing on.

  There’s no getting out of this with a few lies. The escape is over before it even really began. In a way, I’m almost relieved.

  “Alexa?” the familiar voice asks, as if he can’t believe I’m actually standing before him.

  It’s Joseph, and he’s alone. “I can’t see,” I whisper.

  He turns the beam off and walks quickly towards me. “What’re you doing, Alexa?”

  My insides turn to ice. His voice is angry, cold, he doesn’t sound like the Joseph I know. He isn’t smiling, of that much I’m certain.

  “I just needed to get some air,” I tell him, and my voice quivers and cracks unmistakably, giving away the lie before the sentence is out of my mouth.

  “You’re leaving,” he says, a little too loudly.

  “Shhh…” I say. “Lower your voice, Joseph.”

  “Are you?” he insists. “Are you leaving?”

  “Maybe. I just…I need some time to think things over.”

  He steps forward again, and now his face is just inches away, and I can feel his breath on my cheeks.

  “They’re going to catch you,” he says. “And when they do, they’re going to make you an example. People will point and whisper to the children as you walk by. They’ll say, be good and listen to your elders or you’ll end up like Sister Alexa Bellamy.”

  “I know that,” I say to him. “Are you going to report me now?”

  There’s a long silence and then Joseph reaches out and grabs my arm with a steely grip. His fingers wrap around my bicep and push into my skin until I nearly cry out from the pain.

  “Go if you want,” he says. “Run. Peter’s about to come this way, and if he sees you then I won’t be able to protect you, Alexa. Just run as fast as you can and pray that they never catch you. Because if they do it will be worse than death.” He releases me and I start to run, not looking back over my shoulder, not even thinking about what will happen if Peter spots me.

  As I approach the fence, it occurs to me that I actually might not make it over. Before they put the barbed wire on it three years ago, I used to climb it sometimes for fun. Even then, I was able to do it quicker than anybody else, even the boys.

  But now, as I approach, my legs feel heavy and I realize that I might actually get stuck on the razor wire at the top. Not only that, but just the sound I’ll make will likely raise hell with the sentries nearby.

  It doesn’t matter, though. I can’t stop and turn back now.

  That chance has passed and is long gone.

  Before I start to climb, I quickly pull my sweatshirt over my head, and then I wrap it around my waist, tying it off like a belt. Seconds later, I’m moving up the chain link fence as fast as I’ve ever gone, and although its loud and rattling, I’m almost at the top before I know it.

  My breath comes in frantic gasps.

  I look back once over my shoulder and think I see the dark shape of Joseph standing there, alone, watching me go. He’s kept his flashlight off, but I hear another burst of static from his walkie-talkie.

  I hang onto the fence with one hand, my toes pushed into the links of the fence as I use my free hand to untie my sweatshirt and throw it over the razor wire just a couple of feet above my head. The shirt catches and hangs there.

  Lord, I hope that’s enough of a cushion to protect me.

  I begin climbing the last bit of the fence, and then I trust that my hand isn’t going to get sliced in half, as I grab onto the barbed wire above my head, feeling the sweatshirt against my palm.

  I press on it, squinting my eyes in terror. As I press my weight down, hoisting myself up and on top of the fence, I’m putting more and more pressure on the sweatshirt and the razor wire beneath it.

  Now I can feel the s
pikes starting to poke through the soft material.

  As I swing my body over to the other side, I nearly fall backwards, and instead I flail wildly, my arm scraping across some exposed razor wire, as my other hand desperately grasps for purchase.

  Eventually I save myself from a horrible, crippling fall, even though I’ve slid down a few feet of the fence by the time I stabilize myself.

  I’m shaking from the panic of knowing I almost just fell fifteen feet backwards onto my head.

  Now, as I calm down a little bit, I can feel blood starting to drip down my arm. My arm stings, but I don’t think the cut is all that bad.

  Above me, I can see my sweatshirt, caught, hanging like some dead animal, a sacrifice to something or other. It seems strangely appropriate to leave it where it is.

  I scramble down the other side of the fence, the backpack bouncing against my shoulders as my feet finally hit solid ground.

  Looking through the fence, I think, but I can’t be sure, that I see Joseph waving one last time.

  I don’t wave back. I turn and run.

  GAVIN

  There are worse things in life than DJing at nightclubs for drunken frat boys, but right now it’s hard to think of what exactly those things might be.

  It’s gotten to the point where I can do a whole set on autopilot, hardly even care about the mix, and the crowd is still jumping and I still get paid. And no surprise, they even want me to come back the next week.

  As I take a sip from my beer, I notice that the blond girl with the shoulder tattoo is eyeing me again. She’s cute, and she’s been looking at me all night, and I’ve never been less interested in anybody.

  The bass from the speaker grinds into one of those elongated blasts of sound and the whole place goes nuts. Everyone’s having a great time.

  I used to love the fact that I could do that to people.

  I used to get off on the idea that I could play music that moved a whole crowd, made them happy, made them dance and fist-pump and just enjoy the moment.

  But that was before I went away.

  That was before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before Iran and Syria. Before I enlisted in a war that turned into something I never could’ve predicted.

  Nobody who knows me would ever even guess that I became part of something so secret, so elite, that even regular military personnel didn’t know we existed. And if the military grunts don’t have a clue what I’ve done, then you can damn well bet the ordinary American citizens can’t wrap their heads around it.

  But that’s the past now, and I’m determined to try my best to forget it ever happened.

  I’m sweating a little from the heat in the club and I grab a towel and pat my face down.

  “Hey,” someone calls out. I look up, expecting to see shoulder tattoo girl, but no. This is an entirely different blond girl, and she’s got no visible tattoos. She’s just got a nose ring and like six piercings in each ear.

  “Hey,” I tell her, moving back to my equipment. I’m used to this. When I first started gigging, it was kind of exciting to hook up with the girls in the clubs. They were fun, and they mostly didn’t expect anything bigger to come of it.

  But ever since I got back from my tour of duty two months ago, I’ve had literally no desire to return to my one-night-stands and easy lays.

  Sure, I tried it a few times, just on the off chance that it would maybe somehow get me out of this weird mindset I’ve been in. But it didn’t work and now I’ve stopped hoping.

  “What are you doing after?” the girl asks me, trying to be heard above the music.

  I put the headphones over my ears and hold up a finger, telling her to wait a sec.

  Then I start mixing in the next track. When I look up again, she’s practically hanging her ample tits onto my midi keyboard.

  “Listen, hon,” I tell her, “I’ve got to work tonight. They pay me to play music, not make small talk.”

  Her brow creases. She’s very pretty, probably never once had a guy turn her down for anything. “What’s your name?” she asks, still trying.

  “Tired,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “T-I-R-E-D.” I spell it out. Then I slip the headphones back over my ears as she shakes her head, yelling some insult at me as she blends back into the crowd again.

  ***

  I’ve packed up my stuff and the crowd has dispersed out of the club and into the streets, to yell and laugh and stagger into cabs or down to the nearest open pizza shop, or maybe even back to some apartment where they’ll fuck or do blow or drink themselves into oblivion at some after-party.

  “Here’s your money,” Eric, the club promoter says, handing me five hundred dollars in cash. “Nice set.”

  “It was shit,” I reply, taking the cash and quickly riffing through it before I shove it in my jacket pocket.

  “Stick around and have a drink,” Eric says, clapping me on the shoulder.

  “I don’t think so. I’m going to head home.”

  “You need to chill out, bro. Lanie, the red headed bartender? She thinks you’re hot, dude. She’s a sure thing.”

  “I’m good.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I lie.

  “Bullshit,” Eric says, his voice quieting as he looks around to make sure nobody’s listening.

  The bouncers are talking in the corner and there’s a dude cleaning up, but nobody’s noticing us as far I can tell.

  “Eric,” I say to him, “I appreciate the concern and all, but I’m okay.”

  He stares directly into my eyes. He’s known me since I first started DJing, well before I went into the military. But even Eric doesn’t know what I did overseas, doesn’t have a clue of what I got up to in those foreign countries that he couldn’t even find on a map—he has no idea what I’m capable of. If he did, he’d probably steer well clear of me.

  “Dude,” Eric says, “I don’t think you’re that okay.”

  I smile, giving him a fake grin that I’ve perfected in order to deal with well-intentioned people like Eric and my parents and siblings. “Listen, the day I need to talk to you about my troubles is the day I jump off the fucking Tobin Bridge.”

  He laughs, falling for my bullshit hook line and sinker. “You should at least get her number,” he says.

  “Who, the blond chick?”

  Eric rolls his eyes. “Lanie, the red head.” He lowers his voice even more. “I heard she gives the best head in Beantown.”

  “Now you’ve gone and made yourself a total pig, E,” I say, half-pretending to be disapproving of him as I leave.

  “What’s wrong? What did I say?” he yells after me.

  I lug my equipment out of the club. My car is parked a few blocks away thanks to Boston’s awful street parking and the expense of their public garages. If I paid for a garage every time I gigged, I’d end up cutting into my profit margins by about ten or fifteen percent.

  So I do my best to maneuver through the college guys and girls who are pouring out into the streets after a night at the local bars.

  This is the worst time of night, because you get the angry, belligerent drunks who didn’t manage to hook up standing around trying to start shit so they can salvage some sort of entertainment out of the evening.

  As I clear the first couple of blocks, the crowds thin out substantially and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Almost to the car and then home, where I can already imagine what my bed will feel like as my face hits the pillow.

  Maybe tonight I’ll finally get an entire night’s sleep without waking up in a cold sweat, with the screams of dying men and gunfire echoing in my ears. Sometimes I can even still smell it—the blood and the fear and even the sand.

  It’s like part of me never left those countries—almost as if I dropped pieces of me everywhere I traveled, invisible pieces that can never be found again.

  About a block from my car, I see something strange going on.

  A couple of kn
uckleheads are talking to this girl, and she doesn’t look very interested in them.

  As I get closer, I notice that the girl is dressed kind of weird, like she’s from Europe or something. She doesn’t look at all part of the club scene, but more like someone who got dropped onto this street as part of a reality show stunt.

  The two guys are just your typical drunk meatheads that I’m all too used to seeing on Boylston street when the bar scene is hopping.

  “Hey, what’s your fucking problem, bitch?” one of the guys says to the girl. He’s a tall, broad-shouldered dude wearing a Patriots jersey and backwards cap.

  She tries to walk away from him, but his shorter, stockier friend moves to block her. “Honey, where just trying to get your numbah. Relax.”

  “Please,” she says, and her voice is soft and low. “I—I need to go…I’m meeting someone.”

  “Who’s this fag you’re meeting?” the big guy with the backwards hat demands.

  “Maybe it’s not a fag, maybe it’s a dyke. Maybe she’s into chicks,” the stocky dude laughs.

  “Hey, Julie,” I say, smiling at this strange girl as I walk closer to where the three of them are standing on a relatively unlit part of the sidewalk.

  Her large eyes fix on me and I can see that she’s absolutely scared shitless. But that’s not all that I notice. It suddenly occurs to me that this girl is kind of stunning—like, maybe the most unique and beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

  She’s got the biggest, most intense eyes, and even though she’s dressed in hippie clothes, I can see curves in all the right places.

  But all of that is just sort of flashing through my consciousness as I take in the scene. I’m used to processing situations quickly, and then reacting before I even know what I’m going to do next.

  It just flows, or at least, it did when I was running deep with my squad.

  Now is the first time I’ve felt that same electricity since coming back home from the Middle East, and I have to admit, I kind of like it.

  The big guy with the backwards cap turns and sneers at me. “So this must be the fag in question,” he says, looking me up and down, not impressed.