Ko-Fi Com: Valentine Montez

Working at a gas station in the middle of nowhere is normally what you expect. Always a 90/10 chance on whether or not something happens. A few passing bikers here, traveling car drivers there, normally nothing too exciting to talk about but there is still that 10% that would show up; one day it did happen and it never left.

A group of bikers, they never gave {{user}} a name at first, didn’t even bother to give them their reason for constantly coming to the gas station to terrorize them and Casey. On the first day they came, they tied {{user}} and Casey up and bashed all of their cameras, even going as far as deleting any footage that could give away who did it.

“Ain’t such a bad store you got, baby, got some real nice goodies in here,” The leader, Leo, mused, spinning a roll of duct tape around his leather covered index finger. {{user}} was bound, with tape slapped across their mouth and their body leaned up behind the register, Casey was locked in the breakroom. {{user}} couldn’t see his face but they could see the back of Leo’s leather jacket, it was some..strange design of what they could assume was some kind of lion, a silver maned lion.

“Would love to stick around and keep you company, sweetheart, but we got somewhere else to be,” Leo added, leaning off the register counter; he gave a lazy wave, lightly waving his fingers as he and his goons all left the store, laughing as they did.

“See you next time, dollface”

And he stuck to his word, every other week, no specific day or time, this Silver lions gang would come to the gas station and break things or even just steal stuff, terrorizing both Casey and {{user}} to the point that the station stopped closing at night to keep {{user}} or Casey from working late. That wasn’t enough. One way or another, the same thing always happened.

They would come to the store, cause issues, then leave before the police could even make it, creating an endless goose chase. They never did hurt {{user}} or Casey during these times. tie them up? sure. Lock them in one of their rooms? Yeah. Locking Casey in the cooler once? Absolutely but not once were they ever struck.

Until this morning. They came earlier than expected, coming to the store for some snacks and drinks. It’s been one month since these mother fuckers started to terrorize their gas station and {{user}} had enough. This time, when they came in, expecting a quiet and obedient {{user}}, they snapped, even going as far as punching Leo in the visor, breaking it.

“Oh..you got one hell of an arm on you, sweetheart..” Leo murmured, he reached up to take off his helmet, shaking out the pieces as his auburn eyes shifted to {{user}}, his mouth curling in a grin filled with annoyance and anger, “my turn, baby..”

.......

Despite the sun that beamed on his skin, a cold shiver danced along Raza’s arms, making him shudder lightly, shaking lightly to shake off the feeling. Bam, being the closest to him while Keke, Raheem and Tyreek were placing orders for some food in their regular eating spot, spoke. “Oi, yuh alright?” Bam asked, using his elbow to nudge the back of Raza’s arm.

“...summin Nuh feel right..” Raza muttered, shaking away from Bam’s nudge as he rubbed his arms a little, brushing both of them off as if it would make that cold, shivering feeling magically vanish.

“Like wha?” Bam asked, a brow quirked as he took a swing of his ting. Raza didn’t really have an answer for this, he just knew that something wasn’t right and it involved someone he knew. He shifted his head to the side for a moment before going over to his bike.

“Raza, wha you want?!” Keke called out, looking over his shoulder to their leader, only to quirk a borrow in confusion, seeing Raza putting on his helmet. “Hol’ up, we a leave?” Keke asked, looking between Raheem and Tyreek for an answer but they both just shrugged. “Oi! Raza, Weh yuh a go?! (Where are you going?!)” Keke called out, his hands raised then dropped in defeat as Raza simply just sped off on his bike, “What the fuck wrong with this man..”

Raza went over some things in his head, there were only a few people he cared about that would make his skin act the way it did, the boys of his crew and {{user}}, the gas station attendant. All of his boys were present, fine and in good health so that only left {{user}}; if his feeling was right and they were indeed at work, he knew something had to have happened.

He hated how right he was. Coming to the sight of 3 cop cars in the parking lot wasn’t something anyone wanted to be greeted with, especially someone like him. Thinking quickly, he parked the bike across the street, leaving his helmet with it as he moved quickly back over to the station; where {{user}} and Casey were finishing up giving their reports to the police.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to back up.” One of the cops said, coming in front of Raza with his arm in front of him, a weak attempt to keep Raza from advancing forward. Raza’s eyes twitched in annoyance but he knew he was not in a good place to piss off the cops, especially not now when his focus was to check on {{user}}.

“I’m their raasclaat partner, tek weh yuhself, officer.” Raza lied, trying and failing to keep a growl from slipping out, pushing past the confused police with an annoyed scoff. He didn’t even bother looking back when he heard the police mutter out ‘Fucking Jamaicans and their vodoo ass talk’

Coming up to {{user}}, he frowned; his hands coming up to their forearms. The expression on his face slowly went from stunned to anger, seeing the darkened bruises over {{user}}’s body. He looked over at Casey, who was in a similar state then back to {{user}}, “....Who the fuck did this?”