December 21st, 2013
Just outside Caditz, Kentucky
7:18pm
Rain poured down in fat rapid drops that smacked hard and relentless if you were stupid enough to expose bare skin to them. Winds had whipped and howled on again and off again, depending on the pocket of the storm that Lola was driving through, ever more southbound with each passing hour. She was about an hour away, maybe less, from getting out of Kentucky, and was determined to make it another five hours at least before letting herself park the car and sleep.
She's been sleeping in the car, by the way. She'd left The Homestead yesterday mid-morning and spent her first night off on a dirt road about ten minutes off the freeway, thirty minutes outside of Kansas City into Missouri. Anthony had gifted her and Hector with his old Subaru, so Lola had folded down the seats in the back and wrapped herself up in several blankets before drifting off to sleep. The night was cold even with the multiple covers and warm layers of clothes that she wore, but she survived it unscathed.
She stood now pumping gas into the blue Subaru Forester that she'd already driven partway across the country over the past two days. She stared with unfocused eyes forward at the numbers ticking up in dollars and gallons both, and contemplated what, if anything, she should buy from the station inside before she drove away.
She was also thinking of where the gun should go while she slept so she didn't put herself in risk of rolling onto it, but could still access it quickly and easily.
She was thinking about how her first meeting with one of Hector's relatives (if you exclude that time she beat up his great-grandfather) was going to go.
She was more nervous about how the second sister and the city she lived in (New fucking York, god damnit) was going to end up.
The numbers on the gas pump read $32.22 when the pump clicked and the flow of gasoline cut off. Lola blinked the world back into focus and went about the duty of replacing the nozzle in its holster on the pump. As she moved, a figure was brought to her attention in her peripherals. She looked across to the other row of pumps to see a man somewhere in his early thirties, dressed in a windbreaker and sweatshirt and ball cap. He had paused while circling back to the driver's side door of his car and taken his open time taking in the view from behind of the Kinfolk.
When she looked back and made bold, challenging eye contact, the man blinked like he was surprised. Yet rather than breaking his eye contact or pretending he wasn’t watching, he raised his light eyebrows at her, smirked a crooked-toothed kind of smile, and nodded his head upward at her. Hey girl, the message was clearly portrayed. I like what I see.
Most women would ignore it. He was harmless provided he stayed at his car and didn’t say anything to her. He wouldn’t be worth the energy. To Lola, though, this was two things—one, an opportunity to stretch her legs and let loose some of the stress and tension that she’s been feeling. Two, insurance: the only promise that this man wouldn’t follow her in his car and make things worse for her and himself both was to make sure he had no desire to follow her in the first place.
She wore sweatpants with the waistband slung low enough to accommodate for her growing belly—the elastic would cut uncomfortably into her otherwise. There were sneakers on her feet, and she had a zip-up gray hoodie on whose zipper was pulled near her collar bone, with the hood itself pulled over her ears. She looked exactly like someone driving across country does—dressed for comfort and nothing more. Still, you would think she was wearing steel-toed boots and leather, the way that she cut across the short distance between her car and his; some Saturn sedan that has probably seen two or three owners before him. He was smirking even wider when she walked toward him. He could see the aggravation in her, but had no idea of the storm that would follow.
“Fucker, you got a problem keeping your eyes off my ass.” Lola didn’t phrase it as a question, but as a statement instead. She’d stopped herself within two or three feet of the man. Close enough to attack, but not quite in his face just yet.
The man – Jason, said the workplace badge that dangled from the rearview mirror inside his car—was thirty years old, give a year or so. He had sandy hair that sat flat close to his head, sticking out at odd angles under his hat. He wore the hat because he realized half a year ago that his hairline was receding and he wasn’t sure how to cope with that yet. He was average in stature in every way imaginable—a little lanky, but not especially tall or strong. He was taller than Lola, at least, so that helped him feel more superior when he crossed his arms over his chest and curled a condescending smile at her and drawled out in a twang that could only be found in rural Kentucky.
“Ohhh ah had no problem. Juicy thang like that hard ta miss, even at a distance.”
Lola’s eyes flashed. She always expected humans to cow and tremble and back down when confronted. She managed to be a little surprised when that wasn’t the case, but surprise was nearly always washed away with indignance all too soon. She took two more steps forward, brought herself uncomfortably close to Jason, enough that he uncrossed his arms and brought them out to his sides. His hands were open, fingers splayed, like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to grab onto her or try and push her away. Any other time a strange woman came this close to him it was to grab his dick through his jeans and name a price.
This one, though, all she did was bare her teeth like she was some kind of fucking animal and keep on fighting.
“Boy, you’re gonna fuckin’ eat them words.”
“Wha’h? Yew got some big husband inside the store gonna come make me?” He looked over her head toward the store front, where a frizzy-haired attendant was watching them warily through the glass, waiting to see if she’d have to call someone to sort this out or not.
Lola wore no ring on her finger. He already knew the answer to that question.
“Rest assured,” she snarled out near enough that the cloud that her breath made curled around his cheeks and ears. “This ain’t no one but you and me. And this is your last fuckin’ chance to put your eyes down and not say another fuckin’ word. If your inbred brain has two brain cells firin’ together, you’ll be smart enough to take the chance.”
A shadow cast over the man’s face at his point. Lola didn’t have the Rage that her cousins carried, so humans weren’t warned away from her by nature and instinct. This man had no reason to believe that some Mexican bitch with sloppy clothes and unwashed hair would be able to do anything but use sharp words. He had plans to grab onto her forearms and give her a good shake—not to actually hurt her or anything, just to scare her some and remind her of her place. But as soon as his hands lifted from his sides and his shoulders and overall posture shifted forward, Lola reacted.
Her fist wasn’t especially fast—proximity had made things more difficult. Jason had time to see what was happening, but he was cocky. He didn’t think she would do him much harm at all, so he waited for his chance to beat her back and be able to claim that she attacked him first.
What he didn’t account for was how well she knew how to make a fist, or that she knew exactly where to hit him to make it hurt, or that she carried as much strength in her strike as she did. Her fist pumped into the bridge of his nose, dead on, and broke it on impact. The stinging sensation caused white lights to flash in his face, and Jason was too dazed to react immediately. Stunned, his knees buckled and he dropped down into a crouch, bringing one hand up to cup his face, stretching his jaw and blinking his eyes hard to try and get past the sharp white-hot sting.
Lola didn’t give him a chance to recover. She seized him by his windbreaker and the sweater underneath and hauled him up to his feet. She was stronger than any woman that Jason had encountered before, he’s never watched a woman throw a full grown man’s weight around before. Yet, Lola got him back up to his feet without trouble, and slammed him into the side of his car hard enough that his head rolled back and his shoulders and spine ached where they’d hit.
Lola wasn’t trying to beat him unconscious. She just wanted to leave him with a lasting impression. So she stood against the man who was held against his car. One arm was pressed into his chest, holding him up and in place. One knee had pressed itself between his thighs, uncomfortably close and threatening to his groin. Her free hand knocked his hat from his head and seized his thinning hair so that she could jerk his head back and bare his throat to her. She was going to have submission whether he reached that point himself or if she had to bend him to comply.
Her lip curled and her breath was hot and unpleasant on his face. Her eyes were wild, not controlled—she wasn’t handling the situation as much as it seemed she was trying not to get swept away in it, and he could sense that about her. The bitch was unhinged. What was worse was what she told him in that low, hot, seething voice of hers: “I’ve shot a man in the face and left him to bleed his brains onto the pavement for less than this. I’ve sliced a bitch to death with a hunting knife and these fucking hands. I’ve wrestled Death from a man’s body and then killed it where it stood. You?”
She paused to cast her eyes down from his face to his chest and shoulders, which was as far as she could see before the view of her own body blocked any more of his. Her nose wrinkled at what she saw. “You’re fortunate that the bitch in the store’s been watchin’ us this whole time.”
Lola jerked her knee between his legs so it bumped noisily against the side of the car. The man jerked and startled and made an uncomfortable noise. His face was pale, which made the bright red smear starting at his nostrils and working its way down his neck all the brighter. His eyes were wide and horrified. He’d never been a victim before, so he was reeling at the situation he was in.
Lola smacked the man into the car one last time for good measure, but not hard enough to knock his feet out from under him, before stepping away. She swayed and swaggered as she moved backward a few steps—she wasn’t cool or calm or collected when she stepped back. She flashed him a sneering, victorious smile. He was suffering defeat and she was the cause of it, and that knowledge was written all over her face as she showed her teeth to him with that grin before turning away and walking inside the gas station.
The woman inside didn’t give her much guff. She took Lola’s money that would pay for the gas in her tank, plus a bag of beef jerky, some fruity granola bar, and a pair of large bottles of water. The most that she said to her was some comment along the lines of ‘Good job’ or ‘Hey, that was awesome’, but Lola didn’t respond to it. She just huffed and dismissed the praise with a ‘Whatever’ before collecting her things and returning to the Forester. By the time she’d gotten outside the man was back in his car, trying to stop the bleeding from his nose with his hankerchief. He purposefully avoided eye contact with Lola, but watched her warily when she wasn’t paying him any mind.
The rain was still pouring, but now it was like falling slush. The wind was picking up again too. Lola put faith in her four-wheel drive and drove away from the gas station, putting herself on the narrow crumbly road that would take her back to the interstate again.
She still had a state border to cross before she would let herself call it a night.
Just outside Caditz, Kentucky
7:18pm
Rain poured down in fat rapid drops that smacked hard and relentless if you were stupid enough to expose bare skin to them. Winds had whipped and howled on again and off again, depending on the pocket of the storm that Lola was driving through, ever more southbound with each passing hour. She was about an hour away, maybe less, from getting out of Kentucky, and was determined to make it another five hours at least before letting herself park the car and sleep.
She's been sleeping in the car, by the way. She'd left The Homestead yesterday mid-morning and spent her first night off on a dirt road about ten minutes off the freeway, thirty minutes outside of Kansas City into Missouri. Anthony had gifted her and Hector with his old Subaru, so Lola had folded down the seats in the back and wrapped herself up in several blankets before drifting off to sleep. The night was cold even with the multiple covers and warm layers of clothes that she wore, but she survived it unscathed.
She stood now pumping gas into the blue Subaru Forester that she'd already driven partway across the country over the past two days. She stared with unfocused eyes forward at the numbers ticking up in dollars and gallons both, and contemplated what, if anything, she should buy from the station inside before she drove away.
She was also thinking of where the gun should go while she slept so she didn't put herself in risk of rolling onto it, but could still access it quickly and easily.
She was thinking about how her first meeting with one of Hector's relatives (if you exclude that time she beat up his great-grandfather) was going to go.
She was more nervous about how the second sister and the city she lived in (New fucking York, god damnit) was going to end up.
The numbers on the gas pump read $32.22 when the pump clicked and the flow of gasoline cut off. Lola blinked the world back into focus and went about the duty of replacing the nozzle in its holster on the pump. As she moved, a figure was brought to her attention in her peripherals. She looked across to the other row of pumps to see a man somewhere in his early thirties, dressed in a windbreaker and sweatshirt and ball cap. He had paused while circling back to the driver's side door of his car and taken his open time taking in the view from behind of the Kinfolk.
When she looked back and made bold, challenging eye contact, the man blinked like he was surprised. Yet rather than breaking his eye contact or pretending he wasn’t watching, he raised his light eyebrows at her, smirked a crooked-toothed kind of smile, and nodded his head upward at her. Hey girl, the message was clearly portrayed. I like what I see.
Most women would ignore it. He was harmless provided he stayed at his car and didn’t say anything to her. He wouldn’t be worth the energy. To Lola, though, this was two things—one, an opportunity to stretch her legs and let loose some of the stress and tension that she’s been feeling. Two, insurance: the only promise that this man wouldn’t follow her in his car and make things worse for her and himself both was to make sure he had no desire to follow her in the first place.
She wore sweatpants with the waistband slung low enough to accommodate for her growing belly—the elastic would cut uncomfortably into her otherwise. There were sneakers on her feet, and she had a zip-up gray hoodie on whose zipper was pulled near her collar bone, with the hood itself pulled over her ears. She looked exactly like someone driving across country does—dressed for comfort and nothing more. Still, you would think she was wearing steel-toed boots and leather, the way that she cut across the short distance between her car and his; some Saturn sedan that has probably seen two or three owners before him. He was smirking even wider when she walked toward him. He could see the aggravation in her, but had no idea of the storm that would follow.
“Fucker, you got a problem keeping your eyes off my ass.” Lola didn’t phrase it as a question, but as a statement instead. She’d stopped herself within two or three feet of the man. Close enough to attack, but not quite in his face just yet.
The man – Jason, said the workplace badge that dangled from the rearview mirror inside his car—was thirty years old, give a year or so. He had sandy hair that sat flat close to his head, sticking out at odd angles under his hat. He wore the hat because he realized half a year ago that his hairline was receding and he wasn’t sure how to cope with that yet. He was average in stature in every way imaginable—a little lanky, but not especially tall or strong. He was taller than Lola, at least, so that helped him feel more superior when he crossed his arms over his chest and curled a condescending smile at her and drawled out in a twang that could only be found in rural Kentucky.
“Ohhh ah had no problem. Juicy thang like that hard ta miss, even at a distance.”
Lola’s eyes flashed. She always expected humans to cow and tremble and back down when confronted. She managed to be a little surprised when that wasn’t the case, but surprise was nearly always washed away with indignance all too soon. She took two more steps forward, brought herself uncomfortably close to Jason, enough that he uncrossed his arms and brought them out to his sides. His hands were open, fingers splayed, like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to grab onto her or try and push her away. Any other time a strange woman came this close to him it was to grab his dick through his jeans and name a price.
This one, though, all she did was bare her teeth like she was some kind of fucking animal and keep on fighting.
“Boy, you’re gonna fuckin’ eat them words.”
“Wha’h? Yew got some big husband inside the store gonna come make me?” He looked over her head toward the store front, where a frizzy-haired attendant was watching them warily through the glass, waiting to see if she’d have to call someone to sort this out or not.
Lola wore no ring on her finger. He already knew the answer to that question.
“Rest assured,” she snarled out near enough that the cloud that her breath made curled around his cheeks and ears. “This ain’t no one but you and me. And this is your last fuckin’ chance to put your eyes down and not say another fuckin’ word. If your inbred brain has two brain cells firin’ together, you’ll be smart enough to take the chance.”
A shadow cast over the man’s face at his point. Lola didn’t have the Rage that her cousins carried, so humans weren’t warned away from her by nature and instinct. This man had no reason to believe that some Mexican bitch with sloppy clothes and unwashed hair would be able to do anything but use sharp words. He had plans to grab onto her forearms and give her a good shake—not to actually hurt her or anything, just to scare her some and remind her of her place. But as soon as his hands lifted from his sides and his shoulders and overall posture shifted forward, Lola reacted.
Her fist wasn’t especially fast—proximity had made things more difficult. Jason had time to see what was happening, but he was cocky. He didn’t think she would do him much harm at all, so he waited for his chance to beat her back and be able to claim that she attacked him first.
What he didn’t account for was how well she knew how to make a fist, or that she knew exactly where to hit him to make it hurt, or that she carried as much strength in her strike as she did. Her fist pumped into the bridge of his nose, dead on, and broke it on impact. The stinging sensation caused white lights to flash in his face, and Jason was too dazed to react immediately. Stunned, his knees buckled and he dropped down into a crouch, bringing one hand up to cup his face, stretching his jaw and blinking his eyes hard to try and get past the sharp white-hot sting.
Lola didn’t give him a chance to recover. She seized him by his windbreaker and the sweater underneath and hauled him up to his feet. She was stronger than any woman that Jason had encountered before, he’s never watched a woman throw a full grown man’s weight around before. Yet, Lola got him back up to his feet without trouble, and slammed him into the side of his car hard enough that his head rolled back and his shoulders and spine ached where they’d hit.
Lola wasn’t trying to beat him unconscious. She just wanted to leave him with a lasting impression. So she stood against the man who was held against his car. One arm was pressed into his chest, holding him up and in place. One knee had pressed itself between his thighs, uncomfortably close and threatening to his groin. Her free hand knocked his hat from his head and seized his thinning hair so that she could jerk his head back and bare his throat to her. She was going to have submission whether he reached that point himself or if she had to bend him to comply.
Her lip curled and her breath was hot and unpleasant on his face. Her eyes were wild, not controlled—she wasn’t handling the situation as much as it seemed she was trying not to get swept away in it, and he could sense that about her. The bitch was unhinged. What was worse was what she told him in that low, hot, seething voice of hers: “I’ve shot a man in the face and left him to bleed his brains onto the pavement for less than this. I’ve sliced a bitch to death with a hunting knife and these fucking hands. I’ve wrestled Death from a man’s body and then killed it where it stood. You?”
She paused to cast her eyes down from his face to his chest and shoulders, which was as far as she could see before the view of her own body blocked any more of his. Her nose wrinkled at what she saw. “You’re fortunate that the bitch in the store’s been watchin’ us this whole time.”
Lola jerked her knee between his legs so it bumped noisily against the side of the car. The man jerked and startled and made an uncomfortable noise. His face was pale, which made the bright red smear starting at his nostrils and working its way down his neck all the brighter. His eyes were wide and horrified. He’d never been a victim before, so he was reeling at the situation he was in.
Lola smacked the man into the car one last time for good measure, but not hard enough to knock his feet out from under him, before stepping away. She swayed and swaggered as she moved backward a few steps—she wasn’t cool or calm or collected when she stepped back. She flashed him a sneering, victorious smile. He was suffering defeat and she was the cause of it, and that knowledge was written all over her face as she showed her teeth to him with that grin before turning away and walking inside the gas station.
The woman inside didn’t give her much guff. She took Lola’s money that would pay for the gas in her tank, plus a bag of beef jerky, some fruity granola bar, and a pair of large bottles of water. The most that she said to her was some comment along the lines of ‘Good job’ or ‘Hey, that was awesome’, but Lola didn’t respond to it. She just huffed and dismissed the praise with a ‘Whatever’ before collecting her things and returning to the Forester. By the time she’d gotten outside the man was back in his car, trying to stop the bleeding from his nose with his hankerchief. He purposefully avoided eye contact with Lola, but watched her warily when she wasn’t paying him any mind.
The rain was still pouring, but now it was like falling slush. The wind was picking up again too. Lola put faith in her four-wheel drive and drove away from the gas station, putting herself on the narrow crumbly road that would take her back to the interstate again.
She still had a state border to cross before she would let herself call it a night.