Other Options - Part 9
#9 of Other Options
I had this terrible feeling that I hadn't seen the last of Jeanine after that day she had shown up at the apartment. That encounter went from being surprising, to being creepy, and finally it came damn close to me punching that bitch right in the mouth after she called Mickey and I sick, dirty faggots. I didn't care so much that she called me that. We'd had a previous relationship together, and I could understand that she might still have some bitterness, even though she was the one that broke it off, but I wasn't going to stand there and let her insult my husband. Mickey was the most important thing in the world to me and I would have no qualms about kicking someone's ass if they insulted him, be they male or female. I was fanatically protective of my cute, foxie boy.
Then there was the day that Mickey and I decided we go bowling, with me telling him that I would kick his ass. We were just about ready to get into my SUV when I noticed that the tires had been slashed on the sides. There was no doubt in my mind that Jeanine had done it because no one else in the building had their tires slashed. I was pissed and it was a good thing that Mickey was there to calm me down and call the police to report this. The cops never turned up any evidence that Jeanine had done this, but that didn't matter to me. After they left, I told Mickey that I should just buy a shotgun and kill Jeanine, but he had enough sense to talk me out of that, telling me he would be devastated if he had to visit me in prison. I eventually calmed down and tried to put the whole thing behind me.
But what I was going through now paled in comparison to insults and my tires getting slashed . . .
Here Mickey and I were, sitting in the front of my SUV with me in the driver's seat, Mickey beside me and Jeanine in the back, holding a pistol right up against my head. I wanted to turn around and snatch the gun from her paws, but there was no way I could move that quickly without getting shot, though I would readily take some bullets to protect Mickey if I knew I wouldn't end up dead. I had to suppress the urge to fight back. I had to use my wits right now because my crazy ex-girlfriend had simply told me to drive without any specific direction yet, so I had no idea where we were going.
"Turn left," said Jeanine to me when we got to an intersection. "Don't try anything stupid or both of you are dead."
I didn't say a word. My guess was that me talking would only further infuriate her, and I didn't want to risk doing that. I didn't even turn to look at Mickey, who I'm sure was just as scared as I was. Doing that would probably infuriate the psycho sitting behind me, so I kept driving, turning in the direction Jeanine told me to go every single time. I kept my eyes dead ahead, trying to figure out where it was Jeanine was ordering us to. After about fifteen minutes of driving around, I realized that Jeanine was having me drive in circles, so she probably didn't have a definitive plan as to what she was going to do with Mickey and I. At this point, and against my better judgment, I asked her.
"Where are we going, Jeanine?" I said.
"Wherever in the hell I want," she said. "You gonna punch me like you said you would the other day when I came over to your apartment. Huh? Are you?"
"No," I said.
"Why not?" she said. "Aren't you going to defend yourself? Aren't you going to defend your husband's honor?"
"Not when you have a gun pointed at my head," I said. "I don't feel like dying today."
"Well, that's up to me, isn't it?" she said. Looking at the rear view mirror above me, I could see that her eyes were burning with hatred. "I'm the one who's going to decide whether you live or die today. I'm the one who holds your life in my paws."
"Yes, you do," I said as we drove underneath an overpass. "But I don't think you really want to do this, Jeanine. Do you?"
She got seriously pissed. "How the fuck do you know what I want to do, huh? You a fucking mind reader?"
"No," I said. "But I'm pretty sure you don't want to end up in prison for the rest of your life, which is what you'll get if you kill me and Mickey."
"That's providing I'm caught," said Jeanine. "How do you know that I won't put one behind each of your ears and dump you in some field outside of the city?"
I was about to answer, but Mickey interrupted me. "You were the one that slashed Johnny's tires the other day, weren't you, Jeanine?"
I watched her in the rear view mirror. "That's right," she said. "I slashed his tires after I found out he decided to become a dirty, disgusting faggot like you."
Mickey didn't let those words get to him. "Then you screwed up big time," he said. "You wanna know why?"
"Why?" she said, getting annoyed.
"Because after Johnny and I saw what had happened to his car, we called the police and filed a report."
"Oh, did you?" she said, getting angrier.
"I don't know if the cops have spoken to you yet, but your name is already in a police report as a person of interest in an act of vandalism. Not only that, but I've started paperwork at the law office where I'm employed for Johnny to obtain a restraining order against you. In that paperwork, I mention how you were belligerent towards Johnny and I when you came to our apartment. I also mention how you followed Johnny home from work one day, and how I think you're emotionally unstable."
Jeanine didn't say anything. She just glared hatefully at Mickey and I. Mickey went on talking to Jeanine.
"What all this means, Jeanine," he said, his voice calm and measured. "Is that even if you do decide to kill both of us and dump us in a field, or river or wherever you chose, they'll eventually come looking for you. All it will take is my parents or Johnny's mom to call us, wonder why we're not responding, or coming to our apartment and not getting an answer when they ring the doorbell, and then they'll start to think that we might be victims of foul play. Then you know what, Jeanine?"
"What?" she said
"What happens next is that my parents or Johnny's mom will go down to the local police precinct and file a missing person's report. Whatever detective is assigned to our case is going to start looking though other police reports and they'll see that Johnny reported his vehicle being vandalized, and just like I told you before, your name will be mentioned as a possible suspect in that crime. That detective will read about how you caused a scene at our building and will even see that we got several of our neighbors to write affidavits about how disruptive you were. Face it, Jeanine, if you kill us, the cops are going to look long and hard at you."
I watched in the mirror as Jeanine's right paw came flying forward, the butt of her pistol cracked Mickey right in the nose, sending blood cascading out his nostrils. I wanted to reach back and grab the gun, but I was operating a moving vehicle and I knew there was a strong possibility that I would either be shot or get into a very serious accident. It was tearing at my very being that I couldn't retaliate to protect the person I loved more than anything in the world. I looked over at Mickey and thought that he might pass out from the terrible pain of having just been pistol whipped.
"Jeanine," I said. "Please, don't hurt him. If you want to beat me, go right ahead, but don't hit Mickey, please."
"Shut the fuck up!" she screamed. I could tell that she wanted to hit me just like she had done to Mickey, but she had the good sense not to hit someone who was in control of a moving vehicle. That would not end well for any of us.
"For Christ's sake," I said. "Would you at least let him get some napkins out of the glove box? Look at him, he's got blood pouring out of him."
She pointed the gun right up against Mickey's head. "Go ahead, but you try anything funny and I'll blow your faggot brains out of your head, fox."
Mickey carefully, slowly opened the glove box and pulled out a pawful of napkins. I made it a habit to put napkins in my glove compartment for those times that I went through the drive thru at fast food restaurants and some lazy-ass worker forgot to put any napkins in the bag they handed me. Nothing I hated more when it came to eating in the car than getting mustard and ketchup all over my paws and then onto the steering wheel. Mickey put the napkins around his nose, trying to soak up the blood. Seeing my husband, my cute foxie boy, the love of my life injured like that, I let my anger get the best of me.
"Don't do that again, Jeanine," I said.
"Or what?" she said, pressing her gun up against the back of my head.
Before I could answer, I saw red and blue flashing lights flashing behind me. That was met with the sound of the police car's siren going off. It wasn't just one car, but an entire fleet that was behind us with their lights flashing, their sirens blaring. There was no doubt in my mind that they were after us. I don't know how, but somebody in the restaurant's parking lot must have seen Jeanine carjacking us and got my license plate. I knew that whatever plan Jeanine had in mind, it was tossed out the window now. I saw her turn around and look behind us. She screamed at her luck, and what happened next, I still can't believe.
Mickey, seeing that her back was turned to us, unbuckled his seat belt and leaped at Jeanine. I saw the two of them wrestling around, trying gain possession of the pistol. I'd been driving at 65 mph, but slowed the SUV down in an attempt to stop. Right before I came to a complete stop, I heard an explosion that made my ears ring. I looked behind me, seeing that Jeanine had manged during the course of her struggle with Mickey to have shot him in the leg. Without even thinking about it, I unbuckled my seat belt and jumped to the back of my SUV. Mickey was smaller than Jeanine and that made his struggle against her much more difficult than it did when I tackled her. It took me almost no effort at all to snatch the pistol from her paw. I don't know why I didn't shoot her, maybe it was pure, unbridled rage I was feeling, but I brought the but of that pistol down on her face over and over again, repaying her for pistol whipping, then shooting my husband.
I heard the doors to the SUV open. Cops, pointing guns at me screamed. "Drop it, right now or I'll shoot!"
I dropped the gun and was escorted out of my vehicle by several police offiers. I turned around and saw that several more officers were taking Jeanine into custody, but all I could think of was Mickey. I screamed at the top of my lungs.
"Please, help my husband! He's been beaten and shot!"
The police didn't arrest me, but asked me a series of questions about what had taken place. I found the whole ordeal to be so annoying, such a waste of time. All I could think about was Mickey and how his life was in danger. Luckily for me, I heard the sirens and flashing lights of an ambulance approaching. It stopped right behind my vehicle and a team of paramedics got out and ran to where the police officers were tending to Mickey. I wanted more than anything to ride the ambulance to the hospital with Mickey, but the police wouldn't let me. I broke down, worse than I had done when Mickey and I had that awkward moment when I couldn't admit I was in love with him. I broke down sobbing like when I got the news that my Dad had died of a sudden heart attack. I watched as the paramedics put Mickey, who looked to be unconscious, on a stretcher and into the ambulance. I saw it drive off into the distance and all I could think about is that I didn't know what was happening to my cute, foxie boy.