Slash - I'm Gay, He's Straight

Jakes POV

I was just beginning to read the letter aloud when the sound of a door opening and banging closed again sounded downstairs. Somebody with a deep voice shouted something, and Jenny’s characteristic squeak responded. Then came the sound of heavy feet climbing the stairs rapidly.

I looked up from the crumpled piece of paper and stared with wide, panicked eyes at the other two, who were reflecting my expression back at me. My heart started beating painfully hard and fast in my chest and I stuffed the letter in my pocket without thinking, grabbed the others and pulled us all to the ground.

I shoved Kelly in under the bed first, my feelings of protectiveness prioritising themselves so hiding the 5’4”, 100lb girl who was also my twin sister became slightly more important than hiding the guy I’m in love with who is, nevertheless, a guy. Next under the bed was Taylor, and finally I crawled in myself just as the door of Jenny’s room swung open and cracked against the adjoining wall. Kelly buried her face in her arms, shaking, and Taylor and I glanced at each other, gulping. Tay reached over and squeezed one of Kelly’s hands.

We couldn’t see much from under the bed, but we could see that Peter Hancroft’s walk was steady as two brown size thirteen boots stomped slowly into the room. It was clear from his caution that he knew we were in the house. Had Jenny told him? The boots stopped moving for a few seconds as Hancroft looked around the room, then began walking over to the desk Taylor had been messing around in a few minutes before. There was a sound of drawers opening and closely harshly and it was clear the man was angry. Then we heard some rustling, and I figured he’d picked up the other letters on the desk. The one I had in my back pocket suddenly felt like it was made of lead.

Hancroft grunted, and I realised he was counting. ‘One... Two, three, four... Five... Six... Fuck! FUCK!’ he roared. The deskchair’s legs disappeared as he picked it up and flung it bodily across the room, where it hit the wall and shattered on impact. Taylor’s fingers clenched around my hand and Kelly’s whimper coincided with the sound of the broken chair hitting the ground.

The brown boots walked towards the door and stopped again. I held my breath, but a second later they left, kicking the door closed behind him.

About a minute passed before I found the strength in my fear-weakened limbs to crawl out from under the bed, and Taylor and Kelly shakily followed suit.

‘Are you okay?’ I whispered to them, and Taylor nodded while Kelly just stood there. He put his arm around her while I walked to the door carefully and went to ease it open.

‘No!’ Kelly squeaked. We both turned to look at her. ‘Why don’t we just go out the window?’

‘We can’t leave Jenny here alone with him,’ I hissed.

‘He left her alone downstairs. She’s probably gone.’ I could see the fear in my sister’s eyes, and I stopped.

‘Okay. You and Taylor go out the window. I’ll go down and make sure Jenny’s gone, and meet you back home.’ Both shook their heads immediately, but now that the idea was in my head I wasn’t dropping it. ‘Look,’ I hissed, walking back over to them purposefully, as if I had any more conviction in our situation than they did. ‘Peter Hancroft has obviously been raping Jenny. We need to get you out of this house Kelly.’ A whole different kind of fear registered on her face, and I felt guilty realising she hadn’t even thought of this. But she still seemed reluctant to go. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said gently, pulling her into a hug. ‘I promise.’

Then I hugged Taylor, and pushed them both towards the window, then went back to the door. Taylor started trying to rip at the gauze that was stapled to the window-frame, eventually managing to make a hole in it after a few seconds. He and Kelly tugged at it until the hole was big enough to climb through, then Taylor reached out and opened the window, and lifted Kelly up so she could start to climb through. I clasped my hand around the door handle, and took a deep breath. It opened under my hand, but with no movement on my part, and swung backwards, causing me to hit my head painfully off the wall. I slumped to the ground, my eyes watering.

Hancroft roared something inarticulate, and charged into the room towards the window, where Kelly was screaming and Taylor was trying to shove her through the window before Hancroft got to them. Kelly was frozen still though, and just toppled back into the room, landing on the ground where Taylor stood in front of her protectively.

I climbed carefully and quietly to my feet as Hancroft didn’t seem to know I was in the room, and was just about to grab a piece of the broken chair and run at him when he spoke.

‘Which one has the cash?’ he grunted, turning around but mercifully not seeing me as I was still enclosed behind the door.

‘The girl,’ Jenny’s squeak came from the other side of the door. She was still here.

Hancroft shoved Taylor roughly against the wall, his 130lbs no match for Hancroft’s 280. He hovered menacingly over Kelly.

‘Hand it over.’

I could tell Kelly was terrified, but she swallowed and said in a shaky voice, ‘No. Jenny needs it.’ Fair fucks for a girl who only a couple of weeks ago couldn’t have cared less if Jenny lived or died.

‘I’ll give you one more chance,’ Hancroft said warningly, his voice thick with too many years of alcohol abuse. ‘Gimme the cash.’

Again Kel’s lip trembled, but she shook her head.

Hancroft growled and reached out to Kelly, picking her up and flinging her onto the bed, where she bounced and rolled onto her front, lifting her head to look around in fright.

I got a rush of adrenaline and darted out from behind the door, the chair leg in my hand, which had two nails sticking out from the top.

Hancroft had his arm raised, ready to hit Kelly, when there was a squeak from the door. ‘Peter!’ He turned around, hand still in the air, saw me coming and grabbed my wrist before I could swing at him. I wasn’t a whole lot more substantial than Taylor, and Hancroft lifted me bodily off the ground by my wrist; I could feel my joints screaming as fire erupted along my arm and down my side. He threw me against the wall beside Taylor, and I slumped to the ground again.

‘Where did she put it?’ Hancroft asked, directing his question towards the door.

‘In her front pocket,’ Jenny squeaked. This man had been abusing her family and raping her for god knows how long, but it was difficult considering the situation we were in not to feel annoyed at Jenny for being so helpful. She was probably terrified, but so was Kelly and she had refused to hand over the money for Jenny’s sake.

Hancroft bent over the bed and rolled Kelly over, then reached into her jeans pocket and extracted the €250 we had stolen from our parents. I tried to struggle back onto my feet, but Hancroft had turned around and aimed a kick at my stomach, landing me back on the floor again. Winded, I gasped for breath.

Taylor grabbed the chair leg from me and in one swift movement had jumped to his feet and brought it crashing down onto Hancroft’s back. The nail at the top penetrated the fat and muscle and lodged there, so that when Taylor moved his hand and jumped out of the way of Hancroft’s swinging arm, the weapon, such as it was, didn’t fall.

Hancroft roared and lunged at Taylor, but he jumped on the bed and off the other side, grabbed Kelly’s hand and made for the door. I pulled myself upright and made to dodge around Hancroft, but just as Kelly and Taylor were about to grab Jenny and run, she stepped into the room and slammed the door closed behind her.

‘Jenny, what are you doing?’ Taylor shouted, trying to reach past her and open the door again, but Jenny stood with her back to it, pulled a key out of her jeans pocket and locked the door.

‘Nobody’s going anywhere!’ she screamed, and we all stopped short.

Jenny ran across the room to Hancroft and pushed him down so he was sitting on the bed, then she crawled around behind him and examined his wound, biting her lip.

‘You bastard,’ she directed at Taylor. ‘Peter, are you okay? Please say you’re okay baby...’ she murmured, still trying to see the damage to his shoulder without moving the wood too much.

‘Take it out,’ Hancroft grunted.

‘I can’t baby, it’s in your shoulder, it might be in a major artery, you’d bleed to death. Oh god, they’ll never let you fly like this...’

They continued muttering to each other and Taylor, Kelly, and I looked at each other with a mixture of confusion and fright.

‘Jenny,’ I said finally. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

She ignored me, but it prompted Hancroft back into action. ‘I need you to do exactly what I say,’ he grunted at Jen, who crawled down off the bed. ‘I need you to tie these three up.’

‘With what?’

‘With whatever you can find in this room,’ Hancroft’s voice rose.

Jenny bit her lip and walked over to her closet, and start pulling out tops and dresses. She got a scissors from her desk and began cutting the stringy sleeves off them. With a wary glance at us, she put the scissors on the bed beside Hancroft, and walked over to Taylor and Kelly. She wrenched Kelly out of Taylor’s grasp and spun her around, yanking her arms behind her back. She began tying them together with several of the strings she’d made, then when she was satisfied she forced Kel to the ground with her back against the bed.

She did the same with Taylor except she put him against the wall, then walked over to me.

‘Jenny, what are you doing?’ I whispered, still clinging to the miniscule hope that perhaps this was some Hollywood-inspired confusion tactic and she wasn’t actually helping Peter Hancroft to kidnap us and steal our money.

‘Oh shut up you pansy,’ she hissed, and the miniscule hope disappeared. She leaned me back against the wall under the window, then turned back to Hancroft and said, ‘Finished.’

Hancroft stood up, grasping his shoulder. ‘You’re going to have to pull this out, princess,’ he said. ‘I can’t get on a plane with this. Just wrap it real tight and the pressure will stop the blood flow.’

‘Have you had anything to drink today?’ Jenny squeaked. Hancroft rounded on her. ‘The alcohol would thin the blood,’ she explained quickly, flinching.

‘Not much,’ Hancroft grunted. ‘Just take the fucking thing out.’

Jen climbed onto the bed again and stood on it behind him, still not tall enough to see past his shoulder. She wrapped her fingers around the chair leg carefully, then took a breath a pulled. Hancroft groaned, flinching in pain, but Jenny continued pulling until with a slightly satisfying squelching sound the nail came loose. There was no rapid spurting of blood, indicating that Taylor hadn’t hit an artery, but it started bleeding all the same, and Jenny ran to press what remained of her string tops to the wound.

‘I have to go downstairs,’ Hancroft said. ‘Watch them.’

He unlocked the door and opened it, still clenching his shoulder, then closed and locked it behind him. We heard the sound of his boots on the stairs a second later.

There was silence in the room for a few moments, then I said quietly, ‘You gonna tell us what’s going on, Jen?’ She just scowled at me, so I said, ‘You hate him. He beats your mother. We know he rapes you-’

Jenny laughed suddenly. ‘Rapes me! He doesn’t rape me. It’s consensual. We’re in love.’

I was so shocked the only thing I could come up with was a seriously inappropriate, ‘But what about me?’

Jenny made a face. ‘Yes, what about you Jake? How long have you been fucking that fairy?’ She jerked her thumb in Taylor’s direction.

‘If you’re in love with him then why did you stay with me?’

‘I needed you. I needed a cover and I needed money. But nothing I did could get you to hand over that engagement ring money, could it? I couldn’t seduce you into it, and then at the party it became blindingly obvious why.’ She scowled. ‘So when Peter rang me and told me the plan had failed, I changed tactic. I pretended it was my mother who’d called me, and tried for the sympathy vote. But you raced off to be with your boyfriend instead and I had to try the other Chaplain for cash.’ Kelly glared at her, but Jenny just scowled. ‘But then you decided to be chivalrous and wait four whole fucking days to give me the money Peter needed to fly to Donegal and finish the job.’

‘What job?’ I asked.

‘Killing my mother,’ she said, as if it were obvious and I was an idiot to not have guessed it. ‘Peter was going to kill her, and we were going to run away and have a proper life together, without her or that stupid little brat.’

‘But she’s gone now,’ Taylor interrupted. ‘Why does he have to go and... finish the job?’

‘Because then I will get her life assurance, Peter and I obviously have no money or I wouldn’t have had to wait around here to get the money off you losers.’

‘Well why bring us all back here? Why not just go to the airport and disappear?’ Kelly asked angrily.

Jenny had the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘This wasn’t part of the plan. You two,’ she looked at Taylor and I, ‘were supposed to be gone by the time I got back here. I only sent you here in the first place to get you out of the way. And you wouldn’t give me the money,’ she said to Kelly. ‘You insisted on coming back here with me even when I told you I could do the rest by myself.’

Kelly’s bottom jaw was quivering in anger. ‘I thought you might be scared,’ she spat. ‘I thought you could use the help.’

Jenny shrugged. ‘Yeah, well.’

We were all quiet for a few moments, Jenny picking absently at her cuticles, until we heard Hancroft coming back up the stairs. The lock clicked open and he walked in, wearing a large coat and slumping slightly to one side in pain.

‘You’ll have to drive me to the airport,’ he said to Jenny, tossing her a set of keys.

‘What about them?’ she asked.

‘Leave them,’ he grunted.

Jenny bit her lip. ‘Don’t you think we should-’

‘No! Don’t question me, girl.’ Jenny stopped short. ‘Take their phones,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve disconnected the landline.’

Jenny came to each of us in turn and took our mobiles out of our pockets, slipping them into her own.

‘Let’s go,’ Hancroft said impatiently, walking out of the room. Jenny rushed after him, closing and locking the door behind her. We all sat there silently for a few minutes, listening as they descended the stairs, closed the front door behind them, started the car, and drove away.

Taylor’s POV

Jenny had tied us really tightly, and I could feel the circulation to my hands and fingers slowing. I wriggled my wrists but I couldn’t loosen the knots, and it burned my skin to try.

‘Can either of you guys stand up?’ I asked, knowing I couldn’t; Jenny had put us leaning at an angle against the walls and bed, it was impossible to stand up without the help of my hands.

Jake shook his head.

‘No,’ Kelly said, wriggling in frustration. ‘Wait, hang on...’ We both looked at her as she wriggled and fell over sideways.

‘Oh wonderful,’ Jake snapped from across the room.

‘Shut up,’ Kelly said, who was still wriggling. Her arms were unnaturally arched and I realised she’d dislocated her shoulders and elbows.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, shocked. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

‘Do what?’ Jake asked; from his position under the window he couldn’t see Kelly at the bottom of the bed.

‘Dislocate stuff.’

‘Oh yeah, we both can,’ he said. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘No.’

‘Not the time guys,’ Kelly muttered. She shuffled so her tied hands were now under her knees, which she’d pulled up to her chin. ‘This is gonna hurt,’ she winced. She pulled back one leg so the knee was now by her ear, and slipped her foot down through her arms. Her hands were now tied under one leg, and she repeated the process so her hands were in front of her. She lay there for a few seconds gasping. ‘That really hurt,’ she whined, but sat up and started worrying the knots at her wrists with her teeth.

‘Why aren’t you doing it?’ I asked Jake.

He shrugged. ‘Too tall.’

Kelly screamed suddenly. ‘Free! I’m free!’ She pulled herself up and danced around the room, then untied Jake and I.

‘We have to call the Gardaí,’ Jake said assertively.

‘Yeah, with what, genius?’ Kelly demanded.

Jake shook his head to clear it. ‘Okay, did you guys at least drive here?’

‘Yeah...’

‘Then let’s go. They can’t have more than a twenty minutes head start.’

‘Are you joking?’

‘No,’ Jake said, ‘Gimme the keys.’

‘Yeah, I don’t think so,’ Kelly said, taking them out of her pocket. ‘I’m a better driver than you.’

‘You are not, you stall the car more often than you take it shopping.’

‘That is not true, you’re exagg-’

I reached out and grabbed the keys. ‘I’m driving. And you’re both sitting in the back.’