Hero

Black people, they were judged accordingly. They were worthless then, they are worthless now. She wished she could drain every ounce of Black blood out of her body. She’d have to settle for draining it from Adelle Smith.

When she was finished with her lunch Natsinet carried her dishes to the kitchen, placed them in the sink, and went into the bedroom to check on her charge.

The smell hit her immediately. Three days of not airing out the room had made the smell of feces and urine settle in like it owned the place. She’d have to air the room out soon if she didn’t want it settling into the bedsheets and carpet. Natsinet glanced in disgust at her unconscious patient lying amid a pool of filth and checked her pulse. It was steady. She glanced at the clock on the bureau and her eyes passed over a notepad left there. She almost looked away but was drawn to two words scrawled on the top sheet.

My guns.

Natsinet picked up the pad. No doubt, the shaky handwriting was Adelle’s.

According to Rachael’s notes, Tonya Brown had dropped by Saturday and Sunday and spent a considerable amount of time at the apartment. Rachael indicated that the few times Adelle was conscious she was very groggy and tried to communicate with Tonya but had been unable to. Tonya had been a little upset at that. Natsinet’s rage flared as she realized that the tranquilizers she’d slipped into Adelle’s prescription bottle hadn’t been a high enough dose to knock her out for most of the time. It was quickly apparent to her that Adelle had been trying to tell her daughter that she had weapons in the house, that she needed to have access to them.

Did Tonya understand the meaning of this message?

Natsinet set the notepad down and began her search. She rummaged through the dresser drawers, rooting under clothing, coming up with nothing. She checked in and around Adelle’s bed then turned her attention to the closet and quickly found what she was looking for.

The shoebox she brought down was heavy. She opened it and lifted a black handgun from where it lay nestled in a towel. Natsinet didn’t know much about guns, only that you pointed them and pulled the trigger and if you hit your target a hole was put in it. She set the box down and turned the gun over. She had no idea what caliber it might be, but correctly guessed it was some kind of semi-automatic. With some fumbling, making sure she kept the barrel pointed away from her, she got the clip ejected. It was full. The chamber was empty. With some experimenting she was able to figure out that the safety was engaged.

Natsinet flicked the safety off and pointed the gun at Adelle Smith’s sleeping form, sighting down the barrel of the gun. She lined up the sites on the top of the gun until they were level, the site at the end of the barrel lined up perfectly with Adelle’s head. She pulled the trigger and the hammer fell on an empty chamber with a loud “Click!”

Natsinet glared at Adelle’s still sleeping form. And as her anger ebbed a plan began to formulate.

Chapter Thirteen

Adelle Smith awoke with a start. Her hand flew to her throat. She’d had a dream that she was being strangled. She looked around her room, reassuring herself that it was just a dream while taking in deep breaths to calm her heart rate.

The room smelled horrible, and there was a burning itch centered in the small of her back now. Definitely a bedsore. Maybe several. Her left side ached and her entire body throbbed from the contortions her muscles had been put through while the stun gun and the cattle prod had dumped agonizing currents of electricity into her body.

She was relaxed now, the dream forgotten, reality once again impressing itself upon her with far more urgency and intensity than any nightmare ever could. And for the first time she realized she was naked.

Naked and lying in her own filth.

And Natsinet was standing at the foot of the bed, that evil look on her face again.

Please, no, Adelle thought, not even knowing why she silently begged the nurse to not torture her anymore. She was just going to do it anyway.

“We’re going to start a new therapy technique,” Natsinet said. She was leaning forward, her features impassive. No emotion in her eyes. “It’s very similar to the therapy we’ve been engaging in but this one is…well, not only less painful but a little more…how shall I say? Invasive.”

Natsinet held up her right hand and Adelle saw with mind numbing horror that she was holding a black pistol. Adelle recognized it immediately. It was her Sig Sauer nine millimeter, the one she kept stashed in her magazine rack. Tonya was supposed to have—

“Did you know that gun crimes in this country, in this part of the city, stem from criminals that break into homes only to use weapons like this against their owners? Ironic isn’t it?” Natsinet raised the Sig. “Most of the guns used in the commission of a crime are stolen from people like you.”

She wouldn’t dare shoot me, Adelle thought, her mind racing. She wouldn’t dare!

“Let’s get you tied down.” Setting the gun down on the bureau, Natsinet tied Adelle’s right side to the bed rest and then bound both legs to the lower part of the bed. Adelle struggled and was able to muster a loud “Waaahhhh!” sound.

“Shut up!” A hard slap to the face cut off her feeble attempt at a cry for help.

When Natsinet was finished she resumed her position at the foot of the bed.

 “Once again, this is very similar to the therapy we’ve worked on before. Only there’s a big difference this time.”

As she spoke, Natsinet pulled Adelle’s right leg away from her prone and lame left leg. With her groin exposed, Adelle felt more vulnerable than ever.

“As you can see, I didn’t tie you down that tight. You have room to move. In fact, you have room to scrunch yourself back a good five, maybe ten inches. If you do that, you can use your right leg to maneuver yourself out of this rope I’ve got strapping you down and if you get that far, we can call it a day. How’s that sound?”

Adelle’s heart was racing. Somehow, she knew that what Natsinet had in store was going to be worse than all of her other so-called therapies combined.

Natsinet retrieved the Sig from the bureau, brandishing it coyly.

“I found this and the other gun in the closet. You’re one mean old lady, Mrs. Smith. How many times you ever had to use one of these?”

If I could get my hands on my nine now I’d empty the thing in your head!

“Of course, if I lived in this shithole you call a home, I’d be armed with one of these too. In fact, I’d carry it everywhere I went in this neighborhood. You got some mean-looking motherfuckers that live in this neighborhood, Mrs. Smith. A bunch of them have been hanging out across the street from your building. Oh, I got them pegged, just like I got you pegged first time I saw you. Bunch of grown men wasting the day hanging around doing nothing when they should be out there doing something with their lives. They’re probably the local pimps and drug dealers, aren’t they Mrs. Smith?”

She’s talking about Mike Simmons and his crew, Adelle thought. She knew the streets had claimed Mike but whenever she saw him she still tried to steer him in the right direction. She had the feeling Mike appreciated and respected that gesture; for as long as she’d lived in this neighborhood she’d never been the victim of a crime, nor had her apartment been broken into. She tried to look after Mike and his crew and they looked after her.

“I bet you know exactly what they do and you don’t do shit about it,” Natsinet continued. Adelle realized that Natsinet was on one of her psychotic rants again. The thought of how this was going to end up made her heart race faster. “So much for being a community activist and being a big ‘ol Civil Rights leader, trying to save your people from the streets. You didn’t save those thugs from shit!”

There you go generalizing again, Adelle thought. What if they weren’t thugs and were just guys from the neighborhood hanging out? You’d still brush them under the same rug because that’s how you see all of us. As thugs.

“Anyway, you shouldn’t have guns in your house, Mrs. Smith, because low-lifes like the guys outside are liable to break in here, beat, rob and rape you and then kill you with this thing and then use it to commit other crimes.”