Armed and Dangerous Teaser!

(c) 2013 by Nenia Campbell (do not copy or reproduce without author's permission)

I said when my 99-cent sale was over, I'd post a teaser for my fans to read! The votes were all for Armed and Dangerous (LOL, I guess I know which of my stories people like best) so here is an excerpt from chapter one!

***TEASER***
My psychologists suggested that it might be therapeutic to write about what happened. That it would be beneficial, as they put it, for me to confront my demons head-on. They failed to take into account the fact that I might not want to confront the horrors of my recent past, let alone document it all in the written word, for any and all to see. Whatever you say can, and will, be held against you, and with the IMA, it would be at gunpoint.

They were terrifying people, and took no prisoners if they could help it.

One visit to the psychologist was all it took for me to realize that these sessions would be a complete waste of both time and money. I wasn't too disappointed. My mother had selected Dr. Linden. My expectations had been low to start. I already knew that she did not hold my best interests at heart. Mamá, that is, not the therapist—although Dr. Linden probably didn't give a fig about my interests, either, beyond what was compelled for by the session bill.

Considering that I had been the one to be kidnapped and held hostage by hardened criminals, if anyone had a right to be traumatized, it ought to be me. But no, at the urging and endorsement of Dr. Linden, whose motives I now questioned, my mother was in the process of writing a memoir about her “three months of terror.” Critics were already singing her praises in anticipation of the book's success, calling her “brave” and “inspirational.”

I had been forced to endure unimaginable cruelties—and had I gotten out of it? A temporary prescription for sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. My mother, who had chosen to save her own life instead of mine, thereby forcing me to pay for the mistakes made by her and my father, had a book deal. I ask you, in what universe is that considered fair?

My mother's egocentric one, apparently.

Worse, I was convinced that my mother's memoir would put me on another hit list. Despite stealing from large corporations by hacking into their computers as though he thought he were Neo, my father hadn't realized what he had been messing around with until it was too late. My mother was just foolish. If she revealed some detail that the IMA did not want revealed, we were both dead. Or they might kill us just to err on the side of caution.

“Don't you think you should quit while you're ahead for once?” I asked her. “You have your fashion line. Think about fall—winter ball—prom,” I concluded, a little desperately.

She had converted her walk-in closet to an “office,” and because she never did anything by halves, she had purchased a vintage Royal Arrow typewriter with glass keys. Her closet-office shared a wall with my bedroom, and I heard her pinging away well into the night.

“Christina, in today's economy, people do not want to buy fashion. They want to buy sob stories that will make them feel better about their own miserable lives.”

“That's great. Write about your own life—not about mine.”

“I cannot work with you standing there pestering me. Go change into something nice for dinner. John is coming over at six.”

“Really? But I hate John. Why would you invite him over while I was staying here? You know I can't stand him.”

“You are upsetting me, Christina.”

“You're upsetting me.”

“John is the only reason I have been able to get through these past few months.”

“Does he have time-traveling powers, too? Because I thought you'd only been going out for one month.”

“Out,” she said, jabbing a finger at the door.

“Fine,” I snapped. “But when I'm coming down it'll be because I want to, when I want to, and I'll be wearing an old ratty t-shirt.”

She slammed her closet-office's door shut with a resounding thud that shook the walls.

Ever since she and my father had divorced my mother had had a series of boyfriends, each as unlikable as the last. Dr. Linden, on our one and only session, had proposed that perhaps I felt “threatened” by these men I perceived to be “taking my father's place,” and that I still felt “angry” about my parents' separation. No. Freud said it best, I think, when he said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And sometimes your mother's loser boyfriend is just a loser.

This current model was named John—an irony that went over my mother's head. John was twenty-nine—younger than the typewriter she was using to write her memoir—and an aspiring actor. “Aspiring” in this case meaning that he wasn't enrolled at a film college, wasn't looking for an agent, and didn't have any work lined up. He seemed to be operating under the belief that if he spent enough time in our bathroom oiling his hair like a 1950s greaser a talent scout would drop out of the sky like the finger of God Himself and say, “You, with the oil-slick cowlick, I want you to be in my next movie.”

Maybe that was why my mother liked him—he shared her delusional style of thinking.

In addition to being a loser, he was also a total creep. I found him prowling around in the hallway outside my bathroom sometimes when he knew I was taking a shower. Once, he'd asked me if my mother and I ever did threesomes. I asked him if he knew about my ties to the mob and whether he'd ever had a bullet go through his penis, casually adding that if I spoke to the right people, he could easily find out.

Michael wouldn't do that, though. He was only cruel when he was paid to be. He wasn't a sadist—and he also wasn't around, and therefore wasn't worth thinking about. In any case, after that conversation John stopped creeping around outside my bathroom.

* * *

Mamá made good on her threat and six o' clock found found the three of us in the conservatory of her newly renovated Victorian. Eating wilted green things that could have been anything from asparagus to arugula. John whining about how he needed meat to build up his muscles. Mamá by turns consoling and condescending. Just one fucked-up happy family.

I snorted, and she turned the full-force of that punishing look one me. “Do not make the noises of a barn animal, Christina, or you will be eating your dinner outside like one.”

“I'm sorry.” I bowed my head.

She pursed her lips, looking at me closely, then shrugged it off. I could see her making the conscious decision to ignore me. “I finished twenty pages of my memoir today,” she informed us, speaking to John as she laid her hand on his bicep.

John looked up from his stare-down with the mystery greens. “Fantastic, babe.”

“I was so inspired. The words just flew out of me.”

So does diarrhea. And what a coincidence; they're both crap.

“It feels so good to unburden myself from the horrible events I was made to endure by those heartless men. But God works in mysterious ways, no? And now I can share His wisdom with others. To give them solace where I had none.”

Provided that they're willing to shell out the $9.99 for your poorly edited eBook. I slammed down my fork. “May I be excused?”

“Christina—don't be rude in front of our guest.”

“He's not a guest. He practically lives here!”

“Christina!” My mother gritted her teeth. “You will stay seated and you will eat your kale!”

“The memoir sounds great, babe. Fantastic.”

“You said that already,” I informed him.

Mamá snapped at me in Spanish, telling me not to ruin her chance at happiness by being a pettish brat. “I bet they'll make it into a movie.” John shoveled a mouthful of the kale into his mouth, and she beamed at him. Like he'd just said something exceptionally profound instead of talking with his mouth full and spattering bits of chewed food on the tablecloth. “And if they do,” he added, “I can play as myself.”

“God help us,” I muttered.

“Naturally, Penelope Cruz will star as me,” my mother said. “Though she is a little heavy in the hips.”

And just what did that make me? I glared at her and stabbed at one of the green spears. “Don't you think you're being a little overly optimistic? Your book hasn't even been published yet.”

“Christina, I find your negative attitude to be extremely hampering.”

I drew in a deep breath—count to three, Christina—and said, “I'm not being negative. I'm being realistic.”

She sniffed. “You are being difficult. You should be more focused on your own personal advancements. Dr. Linden informed me that you terminated your sessions with her prematurely. Do you realize that she does not give refunds? You wasted hundreds of dollars.”

“Dr. Linden is a quack. And just what the hell do you think you're doing, talking to Dr. Linden behind my back? Haven't you heard of doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“I am your mother.”

“In name only.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“It did not sound like nothing.”

“Well, it was.”

“Are you gonna take that, babe?” John butted in.

“No.” My mother set down her wineglass. “I am not. Christina, go to your room.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. I'm not going to my room. I'm more adult than anyone sitting at this table, and I'm not going to be treated like a child. I'm going to Dad's.”

“At this hour?” my mother squawked. “I forbid it!”

“You can't forbid it. If you don't let me leave, that would be unlawful imprisonment. Which is, as you might have guessed, against the law.”

My mother's shoulders tensed. I could hear her and John conversing worriedly as I stormed up the stairs. We both knew the real reason she didn't want me to go. Being kidnapped had put things into a new perspective for my father, who belatedly realized that the fantasy woman he'd been married to for all these years had been exactly that—fantasy.
Dad and I didn't have the perfect relationship, but we had far more in common than either of us did with her, and my mother knew this and despaired about being left out of the loop, convinced that we spent every minute gossiping about her.

“I do not like it when you and your father conspire against me.”

“Please.” I grabbed a light sweater from my closet and shrugged it on. “We have better things to talk about.”

“You should talk to a therapist about this hatred you have against your mother!”

“Why don't you do that? Go tattle to your precious Dr. Linden.”

“Perhaps I should. And while I'm at it, perhaps I should tell her how self-centered my daughter is. That she is, como se dice, una sociópata.”

“It's sociopath,” I snarled. “Which, by the way, is heritable—and I wonder which side of the family I got that from, hmm? Here's a hint—not Dad's!”

“How dare you!”

“Why don't you ask Dr. Linden how she feels about you making diagnoses on her behalf?”

My mother scoffed. “You know nothing about psychology.”

“Which is still a hell of a lot more than you know! Go on—ask her. Call her right now. Better yet, put her on conference call. John can talk to her, too.”

“You are a horrible wretch!”

“And you are a horrible mother,” I said quietly.

“See if I help you move into your college apartment, then, if I am so horrible.” With a cry of frustrated anger, Mamá stormed down the stairs, muttering about ingrates and how children who spoke to their parents the way I did would get the attitude beaten out of them when she was a girl.

I did my best to ignore her, and tingling flood warnings of my eyes welling up. I threw my things into my ratty old backpack and trudged out to the car, letting the door slam behind me. Nobody came out to stop me. I hadn't been expecting anyone to, but I still felt a tiny bit disappointed.

You'll never learn, will you?

I turned on the radio. Released the parking brake. I couldn't keep from glancing back at my mother's house in the rear-view mirror. Couldn't stop myself from making the deceptively warm lights now blurred by tears. No, I supposed I never would learn my lesson.
I thought I might understand how a kicked puppy feels.
***TEASER***