When the Holiday's mother- Maureen, was still alive, and Jay was hardly six, he used to wonder why his mother would let their Border Collie inside their home when their father would have Curfew shift, on-the-job hours that took up eight at night to six in the morning.

He remembers hearing the scratchy claws of Trooper, the old collie, clacking over the floors in the night hours. He'd ask Maureen why she'd let him in, the mutt had fleas and he didn't smell the best- and his mother would tell him because she felt better, more protected with Trooper and his left blind eye in the home, watching over her daughter and son when she and their father could not.

The old collie was still alive; he slept underneath the porch every night and Jay would sneak him slivers of left-overs even when Marty would complain and sputter about how Trooper was growing too fat. This was his safety blanket. He had grown up knowing that if anything threatened the old mobile home, the collie would explode into a bark loud enough to shake his atrophying bones.

This is what Jay heard in his ears.

Trooper was a siren in the back of his mind as he heard the words of Cadmus curl around him, wrap around his throat and keep him deathly quiet as he felt his sister's trembling hands wrap around his own.

His hazel eyes were agape as Marty's were screwed shut, both of them waiting for another word- for something else than the deafening silence that followed the words of the man.

The truck was creaking, metal bending from the the top of the truck. Jay didn't know how much longer the Ford could go without collapsing, he didn't think that about that though, as he listened to the low hums of the man's breathing.

"I know you're in there," his voice was whiskey-deep. If a gun shot could be turned into a man's voice, Cadmus had clearly mastered the concept. It sent thrills of goosebumps up the back of Jay's spine- the same way Marty's police-issued Glock firing would.

His sister shook her head, her eyes didn't fly open like he had expected- instead they flinched from beneath her lids, an implosion of what-should-I-do, what-should-I-do became a constant loop beneath her eyelids.

Jay wanted to scream, he wanted to wrestle himself out of his seatbelt's binds and push his sister behind him as he would heave his chest and miraclously save the day with an old piece of metal swinging in his hand. But he knew this wouldn't work. One, he'd fall- face first- from his upside down suspension. Two, his hand and eye coordination never lined up with his long, willowy limbs- meaning the chances of him actually swinging a piece of anything and actually hitting something that was himself was infinitely minuscule. Finally, if Marty saw Jay taking a bullet for her, she'd push him to the nearest shield-from-danger and gladly take any casualities.

So, his mind was trapped into a frantic thought caught between 'what the hell should I do' and 'what the hell can I realistically do'?

He didn't have to think too long, though. Soon, the sound of metal peeling from where the truck's passenger door had been was echoing into a long, low whine in the hot Louisana air.

Now his mind was frantic. It was at the very pendulum of fear as he saw two hands, not covered in blood like his mind was satirizing it into.

They were clean hands, with ten, long tan fingers and a gold band that looked like a family crest on the man's right middle digit.

But were they really clean? Blood might not stain forever, but if Jay looked closely, would he find whispers of swollen knuckles from punching too hard and scars from slipped knives that had slit the man's palms before he dove it into a man's chest?!

There was silence for a few seconds, Jay's eyes hadn't moved from the truck's door opening and he watched two hands suddenly became a pressured white as its owner hauled himself up to see his bounty of Holidays.

The man was reasonably handsome- okay, Jay takes that back- but because everything in his mind is telling him that this is going to be the last face he sees before he dies a horrible death, he tries not to focus on the subconsicous scan that he does over the man's sharp features.

He has green eyes that shouldn't belong on a man that looks so dangerous, it doesn't make his face soft- but somehow, his two bright iririses make him almost resemble a predator's. It makes a stripe of fear lick up the pearls of Jay's back.

He tries to focus best on those, even if his eyes seem to strike with fear- he doesn't want to venture lower. Jay feels no reason as to why he should he move his eyes away from the two irises that follow his. And he doesn't want to. That's what scares him.

"I spy, with my little eye," the man- Cadmus, his name is Cadmus, whispers in a throaty voice as he pulls his gaze from Marty, whose body is forced into an unnatural position at the bottom of the truck's well to a suspended Jay. "Fresh meat."

*

Jay doesn't realize his heart is hammering out of his chest until he watches his sister be forced and peeled out of the truck before Jay is even touched. He doesn't notice because he's screaming colorful words at the bastard, his feet are kicking at the man and Jay wants to say that even his hardest kicks affected him- but it didn't.

He was stone, it hurt Jay's feet more than Cadmus himself.

Jay's screams weren't stopped, and his presence seemed to be void to the man as he slipped his hands around Marty's shoulders and lifted her above and out of the truck. She was screaming, too.

Marty never went down without a fight. There was always a kick in her step. Her teachers called her stubborn, her dad called her determined.

And that's what she did. Her long legs kicked and her arms swung as she pushed and dug her fingers into any piece of skin or clothing she could grasp off of Cadmus. "Get off, get off- or I swear, I swear, I'm going to burn you to hell," she screamed at him, her fist had caught onto his chin more than once but it had proved to be less efficent for her. Now, both of her knuckles ached and the tight grasp around her ribs caused her breaths to be shallow when she needed deep.

Jay didn't know what was going on behind the metal walls of the flipped truck. Out in the inky night, he could only hear her struggling, cursing and grunting as her scuffle of feet hit pavement every few seconds only to be silenced each minute or so.

He shouted. Jay screamed in his seat until his throat felt raw and his mouth dry. His fingers were working on the seatbelt, he was trying to unbuckle himself to help his sister, but it was jammed. He ripped at, clawed it with desperate fingers, and even tried to shimmy out of the Ford seat.

It didn't do any good- moments later, green-eyed Cadmus peaked over the truck and watched Jay as he gritted his teeth and swore loudly.

"You've got a sailor's mouth," Cadmus observed the thrashing boy with a strange gaze. "Not quite as foul as your sister though, she's still muttering 'Devil may damn you, bastard,'" he grinned at that. Like it was funny. Like he was already damned. "Legally you're both mine," he reaches up into the truck and drops to where Marty had stood. "What trespasses Curfew belongs to Curfew."

*

Jay's body feels weird. It could be the heat of the summer night, the fact that he had been trapped in a flipped truck for thirty minutes of his life, or the effect that leaks from Cadmus.

Both Holidays are sitting on the side of the highway; Marty's feet are cracking underneath glass from the window shield, and she's nursing more than gravel-scraped arms now. Her nose is bloody- she has her jacket's sleeve shoved up to her face and she won't move away her hand even if Jay asked politely.

Jay feels light-headed; his wrist has a ghost ache that is almost completely faded, but in each crevice of his being he feels a pulse beating beneath his skin's surface. Maybe it was the truck's airbag, they're known for being compact with fumes that are the explanation for strange sickness.

Cadmus had pulled him up and out of the truck. The man had pressed on his chest, taken a knife that must've been hiding in his back pocket, and yanked it through Jay's seatbelt. He wasn't sweet, but he wasn't impatient like he had been with his sister. Cadmus had watched Jay stand up from hitting all of his body weight into the palms of his hands, and pushed into him thirty different angles to hoist the younger man out of the atrophying Ford.

Now, Cadmus stood on the side of the road, leaning against his car's trunk with a phone in one hand and a gun in the other.

He had told them to sit there and stay, Marty had growled a bit- but she had promptly shut up after her brother's neck was suddenly getting a hickey from the end of a loaded Glock.

"What d'ya think he think he's saying?" Jay asks; his voice is low, surrounded with foliage of city sounds, distant frogs, and summer crickets.

Marty shrugged; her hazel eyes casted down to her feet as she gritted her teeth and wondered why the psycho hasn't murdered them yet. It's humid, her face is tacky with blood and oil; her hair is sticking to the dried crimson on her cheeks and she wants to sink into the ugly, black pavement to a world without Curfew.

"We're going to die, Jay," she finally breathes out, her sleeve eases up from her nose. His sister wasn't a stranger to blood. She had fought with anyone who had a bone to pick with her since she was old enough to hold up her two fists. Marty had came home with black eyes, bloody noses, and split lips. Their mother used to fret over her little daughter coming home with as many A's as she did boo-boos.

But, the fight in her eyes don't exactly match her body. Her knees aren't bobbing up and down in adrenaline, her knuckles aren't cracking, she isn't tucking in every loose piece of clothing in readiness for a fight.

She's tucking herself into the hollow of her brother's shoulder and breathing in the scent of a leaking Ford and her brother's sweat and blood. It reminds her of their garage, where their dad would work underneath the same truck that was on its back now.

"I thought, y'know- if I was going to die young, it'd have a lot more explosions and expensive cars and a cool theme song- never dreamed my demise would be on the side of Highway 12 with my damn kid brother," she shook her head, bloody nose finding the collar of Jay's shirt.

"We aren't going to die," at least, he hopes they aren't. Jay still had a thousand and one things to do- in no particular order, Chris Pratt, Robert Downey Jr., and Brad Pitt. Hell, he still hadn't stepped foot into a club, and the closest he had ever gotten to anything illegal was when he shotgunned some kind of Cloud 9 drug from a drunk girl in Oklahoma.

"That gun- that ain't for decoration," Marty whispered to her brother. Both of their eyes caught trail of Cadmus. He was on the phone, low voice incoherent from the distance that separated the Holidays and the man that belonged to Curfew. "Way he holds it, Jay," she shakes her head. "The way he holds it- he knows it. He knows it or he's amazing at faking it."

"No one is getting shot tonight, Marty. I swear, that gun ain't going to be shooting anyone tonight," Jay promises into his sister's sweaty hair.

*

He's shot.

Well, at least he thinks he is. But it turns out that getting a left hook to his ribs pretty much feels just as bad as a bullet tucked up right beneath his heart.

"Holy shit, holy shit," Jay whispers with his eyes bursting red and blue and stars beneath his lids. He feels for his sister- but she's shoved into the trunk of the car- Cadmus had obviously planned the same fate for Jay, but fitting two Holidays into one trunk that shouldn't even fit one normal sized human being just wasn't going to happen.

So, he opted for blind-folding the youngest Holiday and stuffing him into his passenger seat.

Jay wants to scream, he does- but that gets a leather glove shoved down his throat

He tries to open the door next to him- child-lock.

There are echoes of the hard smack Cadmus had left on his ribs, Jay knows if he survives until the morning- there will be a splotchy purple mar crawling up like tree roots from his naval to his chest. He doesn't want to do anything but scream- he wants to thrash in his seat, to call Night Shift, and to escape with both his sister's life and his own.

But it's silent in the car. It was an unmarked, black Buick from the early 90s, obviously it was meant not to stick out- and obviously it was doing its job. Jay can hear Cadmus drumming his fingers on the wheel, the beat sends ineffable fear up his spine and he tries to count back from a thousand in latin- tries to remember each population of every state and county in the United States and Canada provinces. He tries not to think of how his sister was basically unconscious in the trunk, how each turn and each stop they took brought the Holidays closer to an inevitable ending.

He wants to be in the Ford truck, he doesn't care if it's on the road or in a ditch- he wants to be in the Ford truck. Where it smells like his parents, makes him remember his roots, and always- always makes him feel safe. He wants Trooper in the bed of the truck, with Marty's hands steady on the wheel and a cassette tape his father would label as 'real music' playing as the Holidays own private theme song.

But this is not their old Ford. And unfortunately, Jay Holiday knows this.

AN

I am so sorry this took so long and it isn't even that interesting. Soon though, soon.

Feedback welcome. I feel like my game has been off- I blame lack of sleep and actually being sociable lately.