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144 pages

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	15 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781664197343
Langue	English

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Extrait

NEANDERTHAL JAKE

Carroll N. Jackson

Copyright © 2021 by Carroll N. Jackson.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2021922611
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6641-9736-7

Softcover
978-1-6641-9735-0

eBook
978-1-6641-9734-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/09/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
835287
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
Ryan Sears floated into a hazy state of semi-consciousness. He was just now emerging from a dream in which he was the lone passenger on board a ghost ship, the mythical vessel sailing blind in a dense fog bank. That sea voyage had ended, he was reasonably certain, but he hadn’t a clue where he was at the moment, nor how he had gotten here, wherever the hell here was.
He flashed back twenty years to his college days, when on more than one occasion he had awakened in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar dorm room, with an unfamiliar girl at his side. Excess alcohol was usually to blame. No harm, no foul, in those libertine times. But Ryan, a more temperate drinker since undergoing the sea change of fatherhood, sensed that this present state of affairs was something altogether different. And this something felt wrong, terribly, terribly wrong .
An unknown yet familiar ethereal presence whispered, “Get your shit together, and your ass outta here.” His intuition agreed, that he should heed that warning, follow that advice. But he remained prone, face-down and butt-naked on a hard surface, one that felt like wood and smelled like … yeast?
Huh ? And why was he naked? What happened to his clothes? His blanket unawareness began to frighten him. The apprehension that had at first seeped into his consciousness was now rapidly evolving into a more profound dread, on the verge of becoming a full-blown panic.
When he attempted to raise his hands, the simple body movement was checked by thick wire restraints. Ryan emitted a pitiful groan and tried to roll over. Unyielding wire again arrested his movement, but it wasn’t just his hands that were tethered: both ankles were shackled with similar metal restraints. More anxious by the moment, he attempted to moisten his lips but his mouth was impossibly dry. His tongue felt like coarse sandpaper. He emitted a soft whimper as he lowered his right cheek to the scarred wooden surface.
Memories came flooding back: the shocking collapse and sudden death of Caitlin, his daughter and only child; the ER doctors’ determination that ingested Ecstasy was almost certainly the cause of the teenage girl’s fatal cranial hemorrhage; tracking down the probable source of that so-called recreational drug; his subsequent public confrontation of that despicable drug dealer right in the wine shop; the fight, of which he remembered only the beginning. Ryan’s chest heaved with a massive exhalation.
“The drunk tough guy is awake,” an accented voice declared.
Ryan turned toward the voice but was unable to twist his neck far enough around to see the speaker, who was positioned directly behind him. But he knew who it was. Knew with dead certainty.
“You can’t kill me and get away with it,” Ryan said, his voice cracking like that of an adolescent boy edging into puberty. “People saw me leave the wine shop with you.”
The unseen speaker snorted at the hollow warning. “Who saw what? The old Jews won’t say nothin’. Besides, I’m not gonna kill you, amigo, I just teach you a lesson.”
A loud, stinging slap to his buttock caused Ryan to wince and grit his teeth. He swallowed another feeble attempt at protest and lowered his face in surrender. With his chin resting on the pungent and splintery bench, he awaited what now seemed like a preordained fate.
“Nobody disrespects me, Chuleta Pagán, without paying a high price,” his tormentor shouted with rising fury. “My friend Burro is gonna teach you the cost of your disrespect. Vén acá , Burro .”
A man entered Ryan’s peripheral vision from the left. The unhurried movement caught his eye, but it took him several seconds to fully process the sight before him: the short Latino was stark naked, save for a dingy pair of crew socks that drooped around his ankles. Ryan gasped, his dread spiking, and averted his gaze by pressing his face into the bench’s lacerated surface.
Without warning his head was viciously snapped backward by a grip that threatened to rip the hair from his scalp. Pagán giggled, pleased, then proudly proclaimed, “Behold the Burro.”
Ryan was forced to watch as Burro paraded before him in a burlesque strut. The naked brown man was short—no more than five-three or -four—and grotesquely muscled. Bizarre tattoos liberally adorned his gnomish body, a malevolently smiling cobra on his abdomen the most prominent. Burro was also in a state of sexual arousal, his penis hugely tumescent and, more ominous, glistening with petroleum jelly. Ryan was not unfamiliar with K-Y Jelly and its imitators, products whose main use was as a lubricant to facilitate sexual intercourse. His wife had even kept a tube of K-Y in the nightstand for their last flailing attempts at normalcy during her debilitating sessions of chemotherapy.
Pagán sniggered from the wings. “A three-legged Burro, no?” Ryan’s attention had been so riveted to the scene being enacted in front of him that he had momentarily forgotten the presence of Pagán. Burro smiled and circled behind him, all the while carrying on a running commentary in Spanish. Ryan had taken Spanish in high school, two years with the ever-patient Mrs. Reid, but he had no idea what was being said. He was now thankful for his dismal language skills. Better not to know.
Pagán came into view and thrust his face inches away from Ryan’s. “Burro rides man,” he hissed with perverse glee. “A good headline, no?” He gave Ryan a patronizing double pat on the head, then whispered, “By the way, man, Burro picked up the disease in prison.”
Strong arms lifted Ryan by the waist until his bonds tautened. A large cushion was forcefully wedged between his stomach and the rough surface. Moments later, Burro mounted the bench in a nimble hop.
Panic overwhelmed Ryan; he began to thrash about in a desperate effort to free himself, the metal bonds digging cruelly into his flesh. He whimpered, and embarrassing pleas began to gush forth. He could now smell Burro’s piquant breath, redolent of chili peppers and garlic. He screamed when Burro savagely penetrated his anus. The ensuing act of casual brutality lasted barely a minute, a dozen frenzied thrusts culminating with a bestial ululation. After Burro languidly dismounted from the bench, Ryan broke into a mournful sob, filled with self-loathing for his failure as a protector, both of family and of self.
Visions of his deceased wife and those of his late teenage daughter began to flash strobe-like in his mind: Laura, her once beautiful face wracked with the pain of breast cancer and the exhaustive debilitation of intense, desperate chemotherapy; Caitlin, motionless in a cold coffin, her youthful exuberance forever stilled. Memories of his helplessness sprang up to ravage him. His mind began to disintegrate, events blurring, his life reduced to a kaleidoscope of flashing memories. Mercifully, he blacked out.
Ryan regained consciousness in the driver’s seat, in extreme darkness and shivering uncontrollably despite the late-spring heat wave. Almost oblivious to the seeping horror of his rape, he tugged down on the waistband of his pants and forced himself upright behind the wheel of his Lexus. Oddly, the silent luxury automobile was parked in the darkened carriage circle fronting his house. This section by the elegant colonial’s formal entrance was designed for use by drop-in visitors and the odd delivery vehicle. He himself rarely parked anywhere but in the connected two-car garage around back.
His motions robotic, he flipped down the visor and engaged the vanity mirror. Its make-up lights splashed a garish and unflattering ocher radiance over him. He stared without recognition at the haunted, jaundiced face in the reflection. When the macabre stranger in the mirror broke into a deranged grin, a pitiable yelp sprang from Ryan’s throat, and his body began to convulse in violent t