“What are you trying to say?” Her chin jutted up and her hands were on her hips. She was about as big as a toothpick.
I stood up too. I’d had enough of her. Regretting not beating her to a pulp before, I was itching for another fight. Soon I was in front of her, close enough I could smell her cheap vanilla perfume. “I’m saying you’re a home wrecking, dick swallowing, speck of cunt cheese.”
My girls were whooping and hollering in encouragement behind me, fueling my rage.
“Better than being a washed up old hag.” Kelly’s neck wobbled with attitude. “To think, I told Neil I thought you were pretty— for a black lady.”
I snorted with a smirk. Bitch thought that would send me over the edge. Nope. I gave her my best I don’t give a damn face. “You can eat the corn out of my shit. I suggest you leave. I don’t want to hurt a pregnant woman. I actually feel sorry for you, knowing you’ll have to be changing the dad’s diapers soon too.” I’d been thinking of that one a while and was feeling the thrill of finally saying it.
Kelly cackled like a witch on Halloween. “You really are a dumb bitch. I’m not pregnant—yet.”
What? My hand instantly shot to her hair, and I pulled her neck back. Not pregnant? I was about to lose my kids and the bitch wasn’t even knocked up? Tears threatened to surface, but I held tight to my fantasy of beating the ever living hell out of the girl.
Despite me having a hold of her, she went on. “I’m not pregnant yet, but we’re trying real hard.”
The room turned red as my heart turned black. My blood boiling, I thought of my marriage, my kids, my life all stripped from me. In no time, I’d gone from blessed woman to one drowning my sorrows with whiskey, just like my mother. Fuck, I was becoming my mother. Kelly was the shit stain on my life this time.
She batted her big blue eyes at me and said, “If you don’t let go of me. If you lay another finger on me… well, I don’t think Neil will ever let you see little Gavin and Gail again.”
Her uttering my kids’ names reached into my insides and gutted me all over again, made this, my nightmare even more real than ever before. The pain, fresh, echoed throughout the hollowness betrayal had carved out of me. “One day she’ll hurt like you.” The Banshee’s words zipped through my mind, but I didn’t believe them. Kelly had taken everything from me, everything I’d worked for, sacrificed my life to gain, and she’d never know the emptiness that remained.
She screamed bloody murder, snapping me out of it. I’d stuck my dad’s knife in her pretty blue eye and twisted before I realized I’d even pulled the thing out of my pocket. Regardless of her screams, I was prying her eye out like I was pitting a cherry. I dropped her head like it was hot. Pocketing my knife, part of me wanted to scream too, to hurl, but I held it together as if none of this was real—nothing but a nightmare.
My ears rang as the women shouted things all around me. I couldn’t make any of it out. A fight started between Kelly’s friends and the other Heelz. I went back to my bar stool, my drink, wrapping my bloody hand around the cool glass. The burn in my throat and lift in my head was just what I was longing for. Even if Kelly hadn’t lied to Neil about being pregnant, he was the no good cheating bastard who’d fucked around in the first place, I comforted myself as I took another drink straight from the bottle this time. I didn’t check to see what happened to Kelly. Did someone take her out of the chaos? I didn’t know. My mind was somewhere else, spinning on what ifs.
Before long, the noise died down and Shirley, or rather, The Banshee patted my back. She was helping me into a vest.
“You’re one of us now… Rage.” A sense of pride jolted through me. Shirley hadn’t given me a road name until now.
I glanced around to see the other girls gather around me. Coming out of my fog, I realized they were