Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)

Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)

T.M. Frazier



Prologue





For years, the streets of Lacking have run red. The violence escalates with each passing day. Bodies riddled with bullet holes are left to rot on the streets and sidewalks. As a warning. A sign of power.

A message of who really gets to decide who lives and who dies, with each of the three main gangs competing for the honor.

People in this graffiti-covered town fear the constant bloodshed, the never-ending stream of bullets whizzing by, of walking into the wrong territory at the wrong time, wearing the wrong color, or saying the wrong thing. Not pledging the correct allegiance to the person holding the fucking gun in their mouths.

People stop leaving their homes after dark.

Some stop leaving them all together.

The only law here is gang law. Justice comes in the form of a bullet or a blade. It’s the wild west meets the aftermath of the motherfucking apocalypse.

It’s also home.

I am one of the reasons why people are so fearful to leave their own homes.

Murder surges through my veins like a derailed train.

You can’t do something well if you weren’t born with a piece of that something inside of you. If it was anything else, like art or business, people would call what I have a talent. A passion. I’m no fucking artist. I’m no accountant. My business is revenge. It’s what I thrive on. Taking lives to save the lives of those in the brotherhood. To make a point. To send a message.

For the sheer fucking pleasure of it.

It’s what I was made to do.

If this was the Middle Ages, I’m confident I’d be the man in the heavy hood, lobbing people’s heads off at the king’s command. I have the stomach for it. The tenacity.

The desire.

They call me Grim.

I’m the executioner for the Bedlam Brotherhood.

Death is upon you if you see me coming.

Kidding.

You’ll never see me coming.

A truce was reached shortly after the Governor threatened to send in the National Guard.

Since then, all has been quiet.

Too quiet.

If you listen closely you can almost hear the sounds of guns reloading.

Click click clack.

Click click clack.

The truce was for one year.

It’s been ten months.

Click.

Click.

CLACK.





THE PAST





One





Sixteen Years Old


Emma Jean Parish had wild curly hair and an attitude to match.

We met when she forced her pussy on me. Her cat. A mangy little thing with anger issues almost as bad as mine.

It was moving day.

I was loading the single garbage bag containing all my possessions into the car of a stranger named Marci. She’d popped up out of nowhere like the ghost of unwanted children’s past and told me I was coming with her.

Just like that.

From the way Marci talked about her place, I figured it was some sort of transitional home for kids like me. Too old to get adopted and too troubled for anyone to voluntarily take on. I didn’t ask her anything else, not just because I knew I really didn’t have a fucking choice, but because I didn’t talk. It wasn’t that I couldn’t. I just didn’t.

Words don’t mean anything. After you realize that, you find the need to speak more of a bullshit burden than a tool to communicate.

Besides, I was a kid in the system. I went where they took me, and every few months, they took me somewhere new.

Sometimes, I hated it.

Sometimes, I really hated it.

This time was different. In more ways than one. Usually, I was dropped off by my caseworker, and the people receiving me were about as excited as they were about junk mail.

No one has ever come to pick me up before.

As long as she wasn’t sizing me up for a skin suit, it didn’t matter. I was itching to get out of the fucking boys’ home. Especially since I wasn’t really a boy. Even when I was, I never really felt like one.

I was about to go back into the boys' house where Marci was talking to my caseworker about my transition and probably my behavioral problems—record, problem with authority, anger issues, lack of communication skills, etc—when I spotted her.

A girl a few years younger than me, stood across the narrow street looking both ways slowly and cautiously, repeating the process twice more before suddenly sprinting across like it was a busy highway and not a small, unpaved, rarely traveled road.

Crazy, honey-blonde curls stuck out from her head at every angle, a cross between Little Orphan Annie and Medusa. Hair meant for a doll, not a living, breathing, human kid. And this one was cradling a little, tiger-striped pussycat in her arms. Tears streamed down her red blotchy face. Teeth marks marred her bottom lip where she’d been biting down to try and hold back the flood. She wore long, ripped, denim shorts that grazed the top of her knees with an oversized t-shirt tied in a knot at the side of her hip. Whatever logo used to be printed on the front was so faded it was no longer legible.

“Hey mister!” she called, coming to a stop on the sidewalk in front of me.

I looked to my left and right, then over my shoulder, but there was no one else around. I was sixteen. There was no way she could be talking to me, but then she came huffing and puffing right up the driveway until she was standing before me. Her humungous eyes were too big for her face, a deep, tear-filled blue-green.

I tied the top of the garbage bag in a tight knot and gave her a what do you want look.

She held the kitten in a choke hold around its neck, legs dangling in the air, but oddly enough the thing didn’t seem to mind. When the girl got closer, the little shit hissed at me. The girl giggled loudly. I shifted uncomfortably, not used to such a sound.

Her laugh was gone as quickly as it came. Her expression turned very serious as if she remembered something.

“My foster mama, Aunt Ruby, said I can’t keep Mr. Fuzzy.” She sniffled. “She…she said I gotta give him...” She breathed in a shaky breath and clutched the little furball tighter to her chest. Her shoulders shook as she cried.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Maybe, it was because behind her giggles and tears for Mr. Fuzzy, I spotted a familiar sadness.

She glanced at the house. “You’re a foster kid, too, right?”

I nodded.

“You can’t talk?” she asked, without judgement.

I didn’t shake my head or nod. It’s not a yes or no question. It wasn’t that I couldn’t talk. It’s just that I didn’t.

Ever.

She looked me over, taking in the sketchy tattoos on my arms. They were all done by thugs and wannabe artists during my many visits to juvenile detention centers around the state. They were just a bunch of crooked scratches dug into my skin, done with paperclips or sharpened pencils then rubbed in with pen ink. I planned to get them covered up one day with something compelling, epic, and meaningful.

As soon as I had something like that in my life.

The girl glanced down to the cat, then back up to my face, her long eyelashes wet with fresh tears. What the fuck did she want with me? Even though it was nearly ninety degrees outside, I raised the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head.

“You…you okay, mister?” She wiped her red nose with the back of her hand.

What the fuck is wrong with this girl? She was the one crying, and she was asking if I was okay?

I didn’t know shit about kids, even though I was technically still one myself.

I slammed the trunk of Marci’s car. The license plate, adorned by a bleeding black rose around the stamped numbers, rattled with the force. I turned my back on the girl and started up the driveway.