Sherry's Story

Justice and Redemption

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything to do the Sin City franchise.

Author’s Note: A big thank you to everyone who continues to read this little epic of mine. It means a lot to me.

Warning: This chapter contains racial slurs.

lll

The morning after, my head felt several sizes too small. I had a hangover and a bad one at that. My eyelids felt like sandpaper as I opened my eyes and peered at the clock. I was late for school!

“Fuck!

There was no time for a shower so I tied my hair in a ponytail and threw on some clothes before bolting out the door. Twenty minutes later, I reached the school’s front doors and yanked them open. I was out of breath when I reached my chemistry class.

Every head in the room looked up from their test paper as I came in the door. I groaned. I had completely forgotten that I had a test today on the periodic table. Shit, shit, and double shit. I slid into my seat and glanced up at my teacher who placed a test paper in front of me.

“See me in my office after school,” he said. “Room 8B, in the basement.”

Through the haze of a powerful hangover, I heard whispers all around me. Fed up at hearing whispers wherever I went, I raised my head to stare these goody-two-shoes girls down. However, this time it was different. Instead of smug glances and sniggering smiles, I saw that some of the girls had completely different expressions on their faces. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear on a Bible that they were worried. Something was going on here but I was damned if I could figure out what it was.

I purposefully met the gaze of one of the first girls I made an acquaintance here. Her name was Shirley, a tall chubby girl with red hair and blue eyes. In my opinion, she was very pretty and she was smart. Damn smart. Brilliant, even. She looked at me sadly and I saw her mouth open as if she was going to say something but she didn’t. She shook her head slightly and turned her attention back to her paper.

I tried to focus on the questions but I could not. Chemistry was by far my worst subject. When the bell rang, I looked down and groaned again. I had only managed to answer three of the questions. Tears of frustration prickled in my eyes.

The rest of the day passed in a blur; I stared at the blackboards in my other classes mechanically, not taking in a word my teachers said. The final bell rang at 3:30 and I trudged down to the basement office of my chemistry teacher, Mr. Archibald Smedley.

He was in his early forties and what little hair he had was greasy and combed over to hide a growing bald spot. He wore horn-rimmed thick glasses—in short, the perfect epitome of a science nerd, complete with a pocket protector. The door was open. I peeked in and he looked up at me.

“Come in,” he said, “and close the door behind you.”

I had never been in this part of the building before. The room had small windows that were high and they did not let in much light. As it turned out, it was located next to the boiler room and I could hear the noises. I wondered how he could stand it having his office down in the bowels of the building.

With a wave of his hand, he indicated that I sit in the wooden chair that was in front of his desk. Neither the desk nor the chair was in good shape and I was doubtful that the chair would hold my weight.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, “larger girls than you have had to be disciplined on that chair.”

His words had an ominous ring to them and I suddenly felt very uneasy sitting here alone with him in the now-empty school. I looked but couldn’t find a phone anywhere. It was just him and me.

“You’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you, Sherry?” he asked. “Do you know what I do with bad girls?”

I shook my head. Might as well play along, I thought. “No sir, I don’t.”

He reached down and took a file out of his desk. I watched as his hands lovingly caressed it, as if it were a lover. What the fuck was wrong with this guy?

“Why don’t you come over here and look at what I’ve got here? It might give you some ideas.”

Maybe it was just my imagination, but his words had a double meaning. At his invitation, I got up and leaned over the desk to see what was so damn interesting in that file. Once I opened it up, I wished I hadn't.

Inside were pictures, lots of pictures, of girls. Some were on their knees, giving Smedley a blowjob as he held their head and forced himself deeper into their mouths. Some were bent over his desk as he fucked them. I gasped when I saw a picture of Shirley, tears streaming down her face, eyes raised up and facing the camera, silently pleading with someone, anyone, to make it stop. But the man fucking her couldn’t see her—his eyes were closed and a look of pure bliss was all over his features. God, I knew that look. I’ve seen it on the faces of too many men in too many cheap hotel rooms. He was going to come any second and when he did, he was going to come hard. Right into the mouth of a girl who was young enough to be his daughter.

“God Almighty.” My throat sounded hoarse; it was all I could do to speak properly.

“Do you like my collection?” Smedley spread the pictures all over the desk. So many girls.

“You are one sick fuck, you know that?” I was so mad I could hardly see straight. I scoffed. With a face like his, this was probably the only way he could get fucked.

“Yes, I expected gutter language like that from a whore,” Smedley said.

“I don’t deny it,” I said, raising my chin. I may have been a hooker but I was damn good at it. Some of the most powerful men in Sin City told me so. “I was a whore. So what?”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve met a girl with your spunk? Too long. I knew sooner or later, you’d end up here.” He looked down at the mass of photographs that spilled onto his desk from the open file. “Once upon a time, your friend Shirley was as gutsy as you.”

I frowned. Shirley was not what anyone would call brave. She was submissive and silent now, speaking only when spoken to; dressing in non-descript clothes that even a nun would call plain. “What the fuck did you do to her?

“At first, she fought back. I rather liked that in her. That’s why she was chosen.”

“Chosen by whom? The bastard holding the camera?”

“Very good, Sherry. My accomplice—whom you will meet him very soon—and I broke her.”

“Broke her? How?”

“We told her that if she didn’t do what we wanted, we’d show her parents the pictures and they would throw her out if they knew that their little girl brought such shame upon their family.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “She was a virgin. So tight, her flesh was buttery soft…It makes me hard even to think about what she was like. So slim in those days, so athletic...”

“Why’d you stop fucking her?” The more information he could provide me with, the better.

Smedley shrugged. “She quit cheerleading and every school team she was on. She let herself go. She got fat.”

“And now it’s my turn, right?”

“You are a dream come true, Sherry. Not only are you extremely pretty, your past makes you the perfect candidate.”

I raised my eyebrow in a question. “Oh?”

“Taking virgins, while exhilarating though it may be, does get tiresome after a while.”

“Poor you,” I sneered.

Smedley leaned back in his chair and I was disgusted to see that he had one hell of a boner. He saw where my eyes were directed and chuckled. “But you, my dear, are quite a different story. You know how to please a man. You don’t need to be told what to do every step of the way. From your previous profession, you probably know more about what a man really likes during sex than ten married women put together, don’t you?”

“You have no idea of the things I can do,” I said, giving him a sultry look. I wondered how I was going to handle this situation and decided that pretending to go along with his sick desires was the best course of action. I figured that if I did, it would prevent him from satisfying his lust on another innocent girl like Shirley.

At all costs, I knew I had to stop this man’s twisted game. So there were two of them in on it, were there? Well, I had an ace of my own in my pocket. An ace that was six feet tall, weighing over two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Jones would give this man a taste of his own medicine and all I had to do to set the wheels in motion was to make one phone call. Soon, it would be he who would be begging for mercy. And if I knew Jones, once he got wind of what this bastard was doing, he would show none.

But first things first. I had to convince Smedley of my abilities. I walked around the desk and stood in front of him. I went to my knees and pulled his zipper down. As I expected, his cock sprang out from his greying shorts.

I opened my mouth and closed my mind.

lll

“Damn, Sherry, you are good,” Archibald Smedley panted. I couldn’t help but smirk up into his greasy face. Instead, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and tried not to throw up. I would never tell anyone what had just happened between us. And if Smedley opened his mouth, it would be a case of he said/she said. After tomorrow, any credibility he possessed would be destroyed forever.

“Maybe you should straighten yourself up,” I said. He walked unsteadily to the door and before it barely had time to close behind him, I went to the desk, grabbed a handful of the photographs, and stuffed them into my binder. I needed ironclad proof of what he had done to these girls. If I only went to the police and told them what I knew, it would be a case of he said/she said. With these pictures in my hand, there would be no way it could be disputed. I had no doubt that these girls would never come forward on their own and the kind of justice I had in mind had nothing to do with a courtroom.

An eye for an eye, as the old saying went. Or in this case, a hole for a hole.

By the time Smedley came back, I was sitting in the chair, primly adjusting my blouse and skirt. “So would you like me to come back tomorrow, wouldn’t you?” I purred, looking up at him with my most provocative smile. After what I had just done to him and because of my skill at doing it, I had no doubt that Smedley would gladly jump through any hoops I cared to hold. “And can I meet your friend then too? It’ll just be the three of us, all alone down here. You can even set up the camera. That way, you’ll have something to remember me by. Won’t that be fun?” If I played my cards right, both of them would be caught red-handed.

“It certainly will,” Smedley said.

“So, what time would you like me to come by?”

“Four.”

“Four it is then.” I was unable to hide a smile. At that time of day, it would be getting dark outside. With the autumn nights becoming colder and wetter, no one would be around to hear their screams. It was perfect.

As soon as I got home, I made my call.

“Jones? It’s me, Sherry.”

“Hey, Sher,” Jones’ baritone voice filled my ear. “I heard that Ben is coming to work for us now, huh?”

“He sure is,” I said.

“What’s up?”

“I need a favour. It’s important. Can I come over?” I asked, twisting my finger in the telephone cord anxiously as I waited for him to respond.

“It sounds serious,” Jones said.

“You have no idea.”

“Sure, c’mon over. Give me fifteen minutes to clean up first, okay?”

Twenty minutes later, I was at his door. When I called, he had been working out; there was a set of weights in the corner of the living room. He was wearing an undershirt and track pants. As I followed him inside, I was struck by the ripple of his muscles of his powerful arms and shoulders as they glistened with sweat. The very size and shape of him made a longing for Ben came over me. To avoid staring at his well-muscled body, I steadied my nerve and dug in my bag for the photographs.

Jones’ face and mouth tightened in anger as he looked them over. Even though his rage wasn’t directed at me, I was afraid. “How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know, Smedley never told me and I didn’t ask but judging by the number of pictures I saw, it could have been years.”

“Some of these girls can’t be more than fifteen, for Chrissake!”

“They’re the same age as me,” I said softly as I put my hand on his arm. “We have to do something, Jones.”

“I know. What did you have in mind?”

I squirmed in my seat. “Well, I think that these monsters get a taste of their own medicine. Let them know what it’s like to get fucked. You know what I mean? And I could call Hardigan, show him the pictures, and tell him to put these guys in a prison where they can be properly taken care of.” I gave Jones a look and he understood me.

It is a well-known fact that in prisons everywhere, child-molesters are considered the lowest of the low. I had no doubt that on their first night in the joint, they’d get a hard dick shoved into every fuckable orifice they possessed.

Already I could see the wheels turning in his head as he pondered the matter. Because of the nature of his work, Jones knew more things about inflicting pain than I ever could dream up in my worst nightmares.

“Are you willing to go all the way with this guy?” I was one of the very few people in Sin City who knew Jones’ deepest, darkest secret--he was homosexual.

With his looks and body, he could have any woman he wanted. Oh sure, when Jones was out on the town with Don Battaglio and his entourage, there was always a gorgeous girl hanging on his arm. However, Jones’ interest in his date began and ended on her doorstep. It went no farther than the occasional kiss. Any fondling or groping they did was just for show.

“How did you know?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I figured it out. During our times together, you always took me from behind. I didn’t mind because you never forced me or made it painful. Not only that, you prefer to have a blowjob anyway. I put two and two together. I won’t tell anyone,” I said, forestalling his next question. “Not even Ben.”

“Thanks Sherry. But in answer to your question, yes, I can do it. And I will.”

“Hell Jones, he’ll shit his pants when he realizes what you’re gonna do to him.”

“I hope so. Bastard deserves everything that’s coming to him and then some.”

“Amen to that,” I said. “But before we get too carried away, we have to plan things out first.”

lll

Jones walked me home later that night after our plans had been put into place. Once in bed, I slept fitfully. So much depended on what happened tomorrow. So much could go wrong. In the early hours of the morning, I finally dozed off.

Mechanically, I went through my classes, always keeping an eye on the clock. I was dreading the time when four p.m. finally arrived. At ten minutes before I was to go to the basement, I let Jones in at the gymnasium door as we had arranged. My heart was pounding when I knocked on the door of room 8B. I entered the room and when I got the first look at Smedley’s accomplice, I had to bite my lip from laughing.

I didn’t know his first name but I knew who he was. Principal Dilbert. It was none other than the one I turned to in desperation when dear dead Uncle Tom was dragging me away so he could beat and rape me until I was broken and bleeding. The man who ruled the school with an iron fist. It was he who patrolled the halls, a yardstick in his hands, measuring the length of a girl’s skirt to see if it was too short. It took a while but I figured out that any girl he thought or imagined was loose in her morals, got taken down to the basement.

Oh, revenge would be sweet, I vowed. Now Dilbert would know what it was like to be helpless. Helpless and looking for help. Well, I would watch and laugh as Jones dealt Dilbert his long-overdue justice.

I walked into the room with a confidence I was far from feeling. To my relief, the camera was already set up and ready to go. I had no idea how to work the goddamn thing and if this plan was going to succeed, pictures would have to be taken.

“Can I see some more pictures? The dirtier the better.” Christ, with all the skill I was using, I should have been an actress.

“Why?”

“Dirty pictures make me so hot,” I said, injecting just enough wide-eyed innocence in my expression to make anyone looking at me certain that I meant every word.

Eagerly, Smedley opened a couple of drawers. I was shocked to see that the drawers were nearly overflowing with photographs. I skimmed over them, there were so many! My stomach turned when I saw that many of them were girl-on-girl. “How did you get them to do that?” I asked in spite of myself.

“I can be very persuasive when I wish,” Principal Dilbert said. He had removed his black leather belt and was now tapping it into his palm.

“Are these all of them?” I said, gesturing to the mass of photos. “What about negatives? Are these the only copies?”

“Why do you want to know?”

I stood in front of him and drew myself up to my fullest height. “Because this sick little scam of yours ends tonight. I'm going to destroy every single one of these photos. But not before I take a few pictures of my own. You are both going down.”

“And how are you, an ex-whore, going to manage to do that?”

“I have some help,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder and I swear I saw Dilbert’s jaw drop when he saw Jones. But Jones wasn’t alone but he certainly had been when I let him into the school. Apparently he had had a backup plan that I knew nothing about. The more the merrier, I thought. At his side were two other men I’d never seen before. One was a very handsome black man, in a navy pinstriped perfectly pressed suit with a crisp white shirt and dark silk tie. He winked at me and grinned widely, a gold tooth sparkled at me when he did. When he spoke, his Southern accent and manners came through loud and clear.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Edward Beauregard. I reside in the fine city of Charleston, South Carolina. And may I say that I am very pleased to meet make the acquaintance of such a fine young lady as yourself, miss,” he said.

I shouldn’t have asked but I had to. “What exactly do you do for the Don?”

Edward smiled. “My talent is that I am a highly skilled and highly paid forger, miss. I must apologize but time, as they say, is wasting. Once this unsavoury business has been concluded, I sincerely hope that when we meet again, it will be under better circumstances.”

Despite the seriousness of the occasion, I couldn’t resist smiling as he kissed my hand. “I certainly hope so too, sir.” I glanced at his companion. The other fellow was not dressed up to the extent of the first man. In fact, he looked like any other leather jacket-wearing greaser with slicked back hair that could be found at any diner. All he did was chew his gum and look me over. Edward nudged him sharply in the ribs before rolling his eyes.

“I do apologize, miss. My companion here goes by the name of…well, his name is not important and it might be best if you don’t know it. He’s not much to look at, but he’s a genius when it comes to cameras.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, gentlemen,” Jones said before checking his watch. “Sherry, this is what you will do. I don’t think I need to tell you that every picture in this room has to be destroyed. Fill the wastepaper basket. Take it to the furnace room—it’s the one with the black door. Throw everything into the furnace. Once you are done, on no account come back into this room no matter what you hear. After that, I want you to go home. I’ll be over later to drop off the negatives. All right?” He stared the principal and his confederate in the eye. “In case you haven’t figured it out, we’re here to avenge the innocent girls in this school that you’ve hurt.”

“Get your damn hands off me, you fucking nigger!” Smedley tried to break out of Edward’s grasp but the black man was too strong for him.

“This niggah’s ain’t gonna do dat. Not ‘til ah’s done wit’ you, Massah. No suh!”

I winced as I listened to Edward. Instead of speaking like the cultured gentleman he really was, Edward was deliberately and exaggeratedly talking in a tone that was demeaning.

There was a look on his face that I would never forget and it was an understatement to say that I hoped to God I never got on the bad side of this man. Beneath the custom-made clothes, and beneath his polished façade of being a gentleman, Edward Beauregard had the heart of a killer.

I did not linger over my task; I did not even take another look at Jones’ friends. It was better to know nothing, to hear nothing, and when the time came, to deny everything. I closed the door behind me. I hurried to the furnace room and opened the furnace door. To make sure that all the pictures were destroyed, I put them into the flames a few at a time. I had to wipe the tears that spilled from my eyes as I saw the images. A lot of them had nothing to do with sex—I saw countless instances of girls being beaten and even whipped by yardsticks and especially that black belt Dilbert had been lovingly stroking. I saw pictures of girls, stripped to the waist, their skirts pulled up as a man delivered blow after blow, their skin nearly flayed from their bodies. Welts, cuts, bruises…I saw it all.

“You’re all free now,” I murmured as I watched the edges of the photographs curl and blacken before the fire consumed them forever. “Shirley and all of you whom I will never meet. No one will ever hold these against you again.”

I was still crying when I walked past Room 8B. I slowed my steps and listened at the door. I heard Smedley’s voice loud and clear as he begged not to be sodomized..

“Please, please don’t do this, brother! I promise I won’t do it again!”

Damn right you won’t, I thought. Insulting Edward by referring to him first as a nigger, then trying to diffuse the situation by calling him a brother probably made him angrier.

“There will be no one who will ever believe a word that comes out of your mouth, especially when they see these pictures of my big black cock buried in your lily-white ass. Hold him down for me.”

I heard muffled struggles but the sound of Edward’s zipper being pulled down seemed to resound through the room.

“Damn, this honky’s ass is the tightest I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately for you, my good sir, that just so happens to be just the way I like it, as a matter of fact.” Edward chuckled between grunts.

As I listened to Smedley’s screams as Edward pounded hard into his ass, I felt a pricking of my conscience for a moment but forced it down. My nerve hardened when I saw all the scared faces of the girls in the pictures as they flashed before my eyes. He and Dilbert had done the same to countless innocent girls. They had begged and pleaded not to be whipped or raped too but no one listened.

“When we’re done with you, you and your so-called partner in crime won’t be able to show your faces in this town again. I’m sure there are a lot of daddies out there who would turn a blind eye to what I am doing if they knew what you’ve done to their little girls. Are you gentlemen getting this on film?”

“What’s your hurry, Ed?” Jones replied. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

The next words chilled me. “Because I want a nice 10 by 12 inch blow-up shot of this white man’s pretty mouth around me to send to the newspapers.. That’s it, cracker boy, open wide.”

I couldn’t listen any longer. I turned and ran down the hallway. As soon as I got home, I changed my clothes and took a shower. Even though those men were only getting what they deserved, I still felt dirty over my part in the whole mess. I chided myself for feeling any sympathy and steeled my mind to what would happen next.

Jones had said he would come over and he did. While waiting for him, I had dozed off on the sofa. At his second round of knocking, I bolted upright. I had been caught in the half-awake state between dreaming and reality. The first thought that rushed through my head was that the police were coming to take Ben away for Tom’s murder.

I sat on the sofa, unable to move except to clutch a pillow to my chest.

“It’s me, Sherry,” I heard Jones say through the door. “Can I come in?”

I ran across the room and opened the door, nearly falling into Jones’ arms.

“Hey, are you all right?”

I shook my head. There was no use pretending that I was all right, even to him.

“You’re shaking,” he said, holding me in his arms. “Here, let’s go sit down.” He led me to the sofa and covered me with blankets. “When you go to school tomorrow, it’s gonna be a completely new experience.”

“What did you do?”

“Let’s just say that bulletin boards can be very useful tools for spreading information.”

“But what if either of them takes the pictures down?”

“That’s where my nameless friend came in handy. Like I told you, he’s a genius when it comes to cameras. He made many, many copies from the negatives—that’s what took us so long—and we put copies into each and every teacher’s school inbox.”

“Holy shit! And the negatives? What did you do with those?”

Jones patted his jacket pocket. “I’m keeping them safe. What I’m hoping will happen is that those two turn on each other. Each of them had to watch while the other was getting fucked up the ass. That’s not something I’d want anyone else to know nor can you forget. Even if they never talk about it again, its always gonna be in the back of their minds.”

“Thank you--”

Jones put his finger over my lips. “One more thing. We made it so that you’ll be getting all the credit. We sent a letter in your handwriting to the newspaper with a scoop. They will know that at great personal danger, you brought two monsters to justice. As I said, you will find a complete turnaround of your fellow student’s opinions of you. Tomorrow, you’re gonna be a hero.”

Jones flowery explanation didn’t do much for my misgivings. I was viewed by my schoolmates as being a whore. Once a whore, always a whore. I wasn’t about to become the school saviour overnight. Besides, what others thought of me didn’t matter; what was important is that justice was done.

lll

The next day, everything Jones said was true. In the course of twenty-four hours, I went from zero to hero in no time flat. Instead of getting dirty looks wherever I went, I got smiles and waves and invitations to join everything from the student council to the cheerleading squad. I no longer ate lunch alone; whatever table I sat at became the coolest place to eat. During the next week, if I wore my hair loose, scores of girls followed my example. Whatever I wore to school became the hottest trend.

Best of all, I renewed my friendship with Shirley. She didn’t say much but I could tell that she would be all right. She was taking the first steps in regaining her sense of self. It would take a while, but she was healing.

When I got back home after school, I received the best news of all—Ben was coming back!