Monsters - Chapter 41 – Rewind to the End – Part 2 of 2

 

Monsters

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 41 – Rewind to the End – Part 2 of 2

 Both German shepherds lifted their heads and turned to face the outside wall at the same time.  One of them let out a faint growl.

“What is it boys?” Candy Brinkley asked as she looked up from working at her desk.  She noticed the two dogs getting to their feet.  “Visitors?”  She got up and headed toward the front door.  She opened it and went out to the porch, letting her dogs out at the same time.  There were no cars in front of the house, but now she noticed a motorcycle entering her long driveway.  Two motorcycles!  Both of the black.  As she stared at the motorcycles coming her way, she noticed that each rider was dressed entirely in black.  Two women motorcyclists, she noted.

The dogs automatically took up defensive positions on the front lawn.  They growled and barked ferociously as the two motorcycles pulled to a stop in front of her house. 

“Tor!  Chan!” Candy ordered.  The two dogs stopped barking, but they continued to growl menacingly at the two riders.  Candy watched as one of the women took her helmet off.  It was a woman she didn’t recognize.  The other one left her helmet on with the windshield down. 

“You might want to call off your dogs,” Brandy told her.

“Who are you?” Candy asked.

“Who I am isn’t important,” Brandy replied.  “What’s important, is that I’m your guarantee.”

“My what?”

“Brandy pulled a gun out her riding suit and aimed it at one of the dogs.  “Call your dogs off or I’ll kill them both.”

“No!” Candy cried.  “Suddenly frightened.”

“Trust me,” Brandy told her, “I’ve killed more dogs in my life than I can count.”  She nodded towards the other rider.  “I’m sure she has too.”

“Who are you?” Candy asked again.

Instead of answering, Brandy extended her arm with the gun towards one of the dogs.

“No!” Candy screamed.

“Call them off.  You don’t need them anyway.”

Frightened of losing her beloved pets, Candy yelled, “Tor!  Chan!  To me!”

The dogs immediately stopped growling and went up on the porch, each one sitting down on one side of her.

Brandy put her gun away.  “As I was saying,” she said.  “I’m your guarantee.”

“Guarantee for what?”

“That she won’t hurt you in any way at all.”

“Who’s…she?”

Carol now took her helmet off.  “Me,” she said.

Candy studied the new woman.  She shook her head, not recognizing her.  “Who are…”  And then it hit her.  “Carol?”

Carol nodded.  “Yeah.  May we come in?  I promise, you’ve got nothing at all to fear.  And like she said, she’ll guarantee it.”

“How?” Candy asked, now more alarmed than she had been.

“Trust me,” I can,” Brandy told her.

“That means nothing to me,” Candy replied.  “By all rights, I should call the police right now.”

“Don’t bother,” Carol told her.  “Not only will we make sure you don’t call anyone while we’re here, but I’ll be completely out of the country in a few hours.  Nobody will find me.”

Candy stared at her for a moment, then asked, “Why would you want to come in?”

“To talk.  Nothing more.”

“I’ve got nothing I want to say to you.”

“I’m sure you don’t, but I’d like to talk anyway.  Please?  Can’t we just all sit down and have some coffee or something?”

Candy grunted a laugh.  “You…want to sit and have coffee…and talk…like a normal woman?”

“Yes!  Is that too much to ask?”

“With you?  Yes.”

Carol got off her bike and walked partway toward the porch, then stopped.  The dogs were both growling softly.  “Let’s go in and sit…and talk,” she said.  “And I suggest you put your dogs up somewhere.  We’ve both killed more dogs in our lives than we can remember.”

Alarmed at them threatening her dogs again, Candy backed up and opened the door.  “Tor!  Chan!  Inside!” she ordered.  She held the door open as the other woman got off her motorcycle.  A moment later, Carol and Brandy followed Candy into her home.

“Nice place,” Brandy noted as she looked around.

“Thanks,” Candy replied.  “I do the decorating myself now.”

“Nice,” Brandy said again as Candy led them into the kitchen. 

“You’re still fixing up and selling houses?” Carol asked as she and Brandy took seats at the table, while Candy started pouring mugs of coffee from a pot that had already been made.  The two dogs laid down on the kitchen floor.

“That’s what I do,” Candy replied.  “Sometimes I build one from scratch, but mostly I buy, fix them up, and sell them.”

“Candy girl, the handy girl,” Carol said with a smile.

“Not so much anymore.  I just do real estate now.  I’ve got two different crews working for me.”  With three mugs of coffee in her hands, she carried them to the table where she sat.  She pushed a mug toward each woman and kept the third one for herself.  “What did you want?”

“To talk, nothing more,” Carol said.  “We just made a trip down to Dallas where we did the same thing for…” she nodded towards Brandy, “…my friend here.  Each of us had a first.  A beginning.  She just had a nice talk with hers, and you were mine.”

“Your beginning?”

“Yes.  You were my first victim.  Mom may have made you what you are now, but it all started while she was still in prison, and she let me have my way with you.  That was when I first began to discover who I really was.”

“You were a monster!” Candy said angrily.

Carol nodded.  “Mom told me you said that once.  But it’s become a title I’ve worn proudly ever since.  I’ve spent my whole life now becoming even more of a monster.”

“As bad as your mother?” Candy asked.  “Because I can’t imagine a monster worse than her.”

“Huh!  Nobody can match Mom.  Not even me.  She’s…unique.”

“To this day, I still can’t talk about her,” Candy said, anger in her voice.  “Except, I guess now with you.”  She turned towards Brandy.  “Do you know what her mother does?”

“Oh yeah,” Brandy replied.  “Janice and I have become good friends.”

Candy shook her head.  “What she did to me…”

“Yeah,” Carol replied.  “I know.  I get it.  But believe it or not, Mom considers what she did to you a step up in the world.  You know how she hated men.”

“So she said,” Candy replied.  “So what is this?  A forewarning that she’s coming back for me?”

“No,” Carol said.  “She’s got no reason to.  She’s done with you.  Oh, she was a bit mad for a bit that you wound up with the last million dollars she had left here, but that didn’t last long.  She’s got so much money now that a million dollars wouldn’t even be pocket change for her.  No.  She could care less about you now, except that she always wished she had finished you properly.”

“Finished me!  What else could she have done?  Isn’t this bad enough?  I’m a woman.  I was never meant to be a woman.”

Carol nodded.  “Yeah, but she says she should have made you believe you were a woman, changed your mindset, your thinking, so that you would know you were a woman.”

“Have you any idea how many years I went through therapy?  Useless therapy because what she did to me wouldn’t let me talk at all about what she did to me.”  It took forever before my mind started to catch up with the changes in my body and I finally realized that I was a woman.  Like it or not, it’s what I had become.  That took me years to get to that point!  Life before that was…hell!”

Carol nodded.  “Yeah.  I’m sure it was.  That’s why Mom said she should have changed your mental outlook too.  She never had the chance.”

Candy glared angrily at Carol as she took a sip of the coffee she didn’t really want.  “So why now?” Candy finally asked.  “Why did you stop in to see me now?”

“I’ve seen you a number of times since then,” Carol told her.  “You just didn’t see me.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, but it was always as you were coming out of church, and only from a long distance off.  So I only saw you for a few moments each time.”

“Why bother?”

“Because you were my first.  There’s something special about a first.  You were mine, so I had to check in to see you once in a while.  I just couldn’t let you know I was there.”

“You couldn’t?”

Carol shrugged.  “I’m still a wanted woman in this country.  I don’t work here much anymore.”

“But you came now?”

“I was doing another job.  Now it’s done.  And as I said, you were my first.  This may be the only opportunity I’ll have in my life to talk to you.”

“Just because you consider me to be your first.”

Carol nodded.  “That’s about the size of it.”

“What did you want to know?”

Carol looked for a moment at Brandy, then back at Candy.  “I think she put it best when we visited her first.  I guess, I want to know…are you happy?  Finally?”

Candy stared at her for a long time without answering.  The silence seemed to build in the room.  Finally, she said.  “Yes.  I’m happy.  I guess, as happy as I can possibly be.  I used to love teaching, but you took that away from me.  But I now I think I love rebuilding old houses, bringing them back to life again, more than I did teaching.  There’s something about fixing the broken buildings up again and breathing new life into them that seems to satisfy me.  Maybe it’s because of what you and your mother did to me, broke me, then tried to breathe a new and different life into me.  I don’t know, but it’s what I do now.  So…yes, I guess I’m happy.”

Carol nodded.  “Good.  I’m glad.  I know this is personal, but…do you have…a love life?  Does anyone love you?  Do you love anyone else?”

Again, Candy looked at her for a long time without answering.  “No,” she said softly.  “There’s no one.  “I’ve been out with a few men over the years, but nothing ever came of it.  Now, it’s just me and my dogs.”  She looked down at the two German shepherds lying on the floor, and smiled.  “They’re my babies.  I love them to death.”

Carol nodded, then stood up.  From the pockets of her riding suit, she began pulling out stacks of money.  “I know you don’t need this, but she did it, so now I am too.  Take this and use it to buy yourself something nice.  Something that will make you happy.  Splurge on yourself.”

“I don’t want your money!  I want nothing at all to do with you.”

“I know,” Carol replied.  “I understand.  But I sure don’t need it and I’m not taking it back.  Like I said, splurge on something that you will enjoy.”

 

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The two women hugged tightly.  “Two months is too long!” Brandy said.

“Way too long,” Carol agreed.  “But as much as I’m not looking forward to traipsing all over Europe in lavish gowns, I am looking forward to see you again.”

“Yeah.  And hey, getting dressed up nice for a little bit might be fun for a change.”

“Yeah.  I know.  But a whole month of it?  I’ll go crazy!”

“Me too,” Brandy agreed.  “I know I’m only going to be able to take so much before I start going stark raving mad.  You know me.  I need to let my frustrations out on someone.  More than just Ralphie.”

Carol smiled.  “Don’t worry, I’ve already arranged for Wu Enterprises to make sure we’ve got plenty of rope available, everywhere we go.”

Brandy smiled.  “Oh good!  I have no doubt we’ll be able to find plenty of…uh…innocent victims to play with.”

“Everywhere we go,” Carol agreed.

“Absolutely!” Brandy said.  She smiled.  “That doesn’t mean that I’m going to let poor Ralphie off the hook.  Before we go, I’m planning on buying Ralphie an entire new wardrobe just for that trip.”

“More hooker outfits?”

“Nope!”

“Fancy ballgowns?”

“Nope!”

“Brandy!  You’re not going to let him dress normally, are you?”

“Not on your life!”  She laughed.  “I’m having an entire wardrobe of adult baby girl outfits made for him.  For the entire trip, everywhere we go, that’s all he’s going to have to wear.  That, and his diapers.  I’ve had him in them now since I killed Beastman.  He’s not getting out of them until sometime after that trip.  He’s going to be absolutely miserable!”

 

The End!