Babes of Montego Bay

“Welcome, welcome. Lemme take yuh bags, sir."

"Oh, thanks mate."

A short, afro-haired gentleman in a baggy suit takes a suitcase from the father and proceeds to pull a satchel from his shoulder.

"Really there's no need." The man holds the strap of the bag in attempt to keep it but the pudgy Jamaican gives an insistent tug. "Oh. Thank you. What's your name?"

"Mi name eh Grumpy. Dat wha mi friends call me, anyhow."

"Well, it's nice to meet you Grumpy," says the man's wife as the Jamaican insists on taking her bags too.

"This is my wife Samantha, and I'm John. These are our beautiful daughters Lauren and Yvonne."

"Wagwaan badman?" says Lauren, and the twins giggle, walking arm-in-arm.

"Stop that!" John scolds them. "Sorry about that, Grumpy."

"Nuh bother at all. You girls talk Patois, ah? Very nice. Welcome to Jamaica sistahs."

The air feels like honey as they exit the airport. John wipes his head and puffs his cheeks.

"Yessir!" Grumpy packs the luggage tight into his sedan. "Sweet, sweet Jamaica. Make yuh wanna smile forever, don it?"

The twins smile in unison, seeing who can further stretch their face. Blonde and stupidly-beautiful, their fake, exaggerated smiles look more photogenic than most people on their best days. They giggle, almost losing their bubblegum, chewing it up again as they get into the car. Grumpy's sedan was once black but is now a soot-stain-grey with flaking paint.

"So, Grumpy," says Lauren from the back of the car. "What's good here?"

"Ahh, gettin' down to business, I like it. What kinda vibe yuh lookin fah?"

"Nice beaches," says Samantha.

"Ahh, plenty beaches inna Jamaica."

"Jet skis," inserts John. "Always wanted to try jet skis."

"Well, don’t yuh worry about dat nuh. Grumpy take care a' that."

"Are you our guide for the whole trip?" asks Samantha.

"Yes ma'am. Whatever yuh need, Grumpy get it fah yuh." He smiles through the rear-view mirror with chicklet teeth.

"Lovely," Lauren says to her sister with a snarled face. "How far is the hotel?"

"Relax nuh. Enjoy da ride." Grumpy turns the car through a junction. A colourful Bob Marley mural occupies the entire side of a building on the corner.

"Yaah mon."

Everybody looks at John as he smiles proudly at his delightful use of Patois. Samantha pats him on the knee and looks away, the girls roll their eyes. Grumpy shakes his head.

$$$

"We're heading into town," Yvonne says to her parents lounging by the pool.

"What town?"

"Just the nearby town. We’re gonna do some shopping."

"Is that safe?" John calls over the pudgy Jamaican, who’s wearing the same baggy suit he's worn every day. "What's the crime rate here?"

Grumpy looks at the girls and thinks on the question. "Dem be alright. I'll accompany dem, sir."

"I'm not sure about that," John starts to say, pushing himself up from his lounge chair.

"Thanks Grumpy!" The girls hug the guide and he smiles through the side of his mouth, bringing a dimple to his cheek.

"Nuh worry yuhself, sir. I look after dem."

"So, sistahs, where ‘we going?"

The girls glance at each other for a moment. "Flankers," they say simultaneously.

Grumpy shuts off the engine, the keys jingle to a standstill. He twists to look at the twins slumped in the back, their knees touching under short pink skirts.

"Nuh, why two nice British gyals wanna go Flankers, huh?"

Lauren looks at her sister but Yvonne keeps her glare on Grumpy. "We wanna smoke some herb," she says plainly.

Grumpy rests his shoulder against the seat. "This ‘ere Jamaica sistahs," he says with a chicklet smile. "Yuh can find herb anywhere. Tourist nah go Flankers."

"We heard it's the best in the Bay."

Grumpy starts the engine. "Yuh gyals want herb, mi get yuh herb..." He makes extra effort to look them in the eyes through the rare-view. "Buh we nuh go near Flankers...an' put on yuh seatbelts."

Rub-a-dub music plays on the radio. The sisters click in their belts. "At least play something a bit more lively."

Grumpy switches over the station and an afrobeat remix of a Bob Marley classic fills the car with hi-hats and positive vibrations as the bass shakes the plastic of the door frames.

The twins sway their way down side streets, stopping at every store to browse and try on a multitude of outfits. Grumpy strays behind while they take selfies and videos for their blog. He stops to dab the sweat from his brow with a napkin while the twins use the restroom at a jerk chicken place.

The girls don’t return.

$$$

"Sir. I'm sorry, but yuh daughters, dem snook way from me."

"What!?" says Mr. Hudson, yanking the hotel room door open to reveal damp chest hair over a tucked-in towel. "Where are they!?"

"I’m sure dem fine, sir. Many tourist wander through town unharmed. We gonna find dem."

John scrambles to his chino shorts hanging on the back of a chair. The belt clinks as he struggles putting them on over the towel as to not give poor Grumpy an unpleasant sight. "Well, let's go. I'm coming with."

"Nuh necessary, sir. I & I will find dem. Grumpy guarantee yuh dat.”

"Listen to me, you!" John approaches the door with a nasty finger, the other hand busy holding his shorts on one side with the towel wedged underneath. "You said you'd keep an eye on them."

"I only take mi eye from dem for a likkle minute, sir."

"If something happened to my girls so help me god—"

"John! What is it?"

Grumpy stands at the door with his head bowed, rubbing his hands as though he’s going to take the skin off. "Well, ma'am—"

"Grumpy here lost our girls."

"Grumpy didn't lose anyone, dad." Yvonne's voice comes from down the corridor. "We just wanted to shop for knickers without a man looking over our shoulders. It's not his fault."

The girls are carrying a multitude of colourful shopping bags by their waists.

"What's all this?" asks John. "Our trip doesn't cover shopping costs."

"Our trip was free, honey," says Samantha, "Let the girls spend their allowance."

"Tings cheap at the markets, sir." Grumpy looks more than relieved to see the twins. Miniscule sparkles of sweat occupy the skin under his short afro-fuzz.

"Yeah, and we won this trip, remember? It was us that entered the giveaway."

John holds tight to his towel-shorts situation. "Get in here!"

He tries making room for the shopping bags as they squeeze past, all-the-while eyeing Grumpy in the doorway.

"Sorry about all this Grumpy," says Samantha. pulling a ruffled note from John's pocket. "Here, thanks for all your help."

"Bless up, sistah. Enjoy yuh evening."

"Sorry Grumpy!" the girls shout from the back of the room not long before the giggles start.

John shuts the door. "What was that?"

"It's just a fiver John."

"He lost our girls!"

Samantha looks at him dismissively before asking the girls to show her what they bought.

John is still trying to make something of the towel-under-the-shorts combo. "Are you serious?! They could've gotten themselves kidnapped—or worse!—and you're focused on whether or not a dress makes their ass look fat."

"The girls can handle themselves, Love."

"They're seventeen!"

"Dad! Relax," says Yvonne, a look of frustration on her face.

"Yaah, tek it eezy mon."

John eyes dart over to his other daughter. "That's not funny."

Lauren looks to the ground, trying to strangle a smile behind her lips.

"This is serious.”

"Can't take you seriously with your shorts like that," says Yvonne.

John looks down. He's holding his shorts at his crotch, the towel and shorts sag at either side, allowing the pasty-white, freckled skin of his waists to show.

Lauren starts to snicker. Yvonne goes from rebellious teenage adrenalin to a soft smile. Giggles escape from Samantha's hand as she tries to hide her amusement. They laugh hysterically when John storms off, the hair on his upper back still stuck to his damp skin.

Both twins' phones go off and they glance at their screens: Secondary target eliminated.

The young women look at each other and high-five.

$$$

A couple days later, the family explores town under Grumpy's guidance, checking out local bars, restaurants, and shops bustling with life.

Sitting at a table under an umbrella outside a cafe after having lunch, John snarls, shovelling remnants of crab out his teeth with a toothpick. The girls stare at their phones over plates of smeared ketchup mounds and cold fries. Samantha chats to an elderly woman behind the counter with dark circles around her sunken eyes—red from either cataracs or ganja. Considering it’s Jamaica, the odds are in favour of the latter. Grumpy leans against the hood of his flaky sedan parked half on the sidewalk, resting his eyes from the sun.

"Going to use the little boys room," announces John.

When he comes back the twins are on their way out. They say something to Grumpy as they walk past, making his eyes pop open and they laugh.

"Where are they going?" John asks Samantha.

"They're going to get tampons. They'll meet us back at the resort."

"They will in their arses," says John, throwing a handful of notes on the table and then heads after them.

"John! Leave them!" cries Samantha but he doesn't show any sign of stopping.

John scours the streets looking for a sign of excessive pink. He guesses at each junction, trying to decipher which way has a stronger scent of hairspray wafting through the air amongst the mist of spices and ganja smoke.

He spots two identical blonde heads in the distance as he comes to the market. Squeezing through the crowd, he’s occasionally whipped by dreadlocks and regularly checks his pocket for the familiar feel of a wallet.

"Mistah Hudson! Mistah Hudson!"

John swivels, searching the crowd of faces for one he knows, then spots familiar pudgy cheeks and chicklet teeth. "Grumpy!"

"Am ‘ere to help, sir."

"The girls are at the other end of this market. Is there a quicker way around?"

"Nuh less yuh wanna walk through badman territory."

"What do you mean?"

"Dem gyals headed to a bad part of Jamaica."

John's eyes widen and he turns to shove his way through the crowd with Grumpy close behind frantically waving his arms, shouting "Move out! Move out!"

They push through the crowd as best they can but they're losing ground on the distant blondes.

"Screw this." John shoves his way to the edge of the market with an aggressive elbows-out tactic.

"Raasclaat!" A man from the crowd protests against the elbow in the ribs he just received.

Grumpy apologises on the Englishman's behalf and probably saves him from a beating.

However, John is undeterred in his pursuit and another man is shoved under his influence. The man crashes into a food cart and the entire thing rocks in a gaspingly-long arc until wobbling to a steady halt.

John’s already made his way behind it and is zig-zagging along the rear of the market stalls, dodging elderly Jamaican women in quadrille dresses and turban-tied head-scarves.

They reach the end of the market street just in time to witness a pink blur disappear around a corner. John picks up his pace but Grumpy pulls him back.

"Sir..." The guide's baggy suit is covered in sweat. Wrestling with the top button, he gulps through panting breath. "'Round that corner is a place of badmen and dangerous youts."

John peeks around the wall to see a run-down clay-walled building with no glass in the windows and a corrugated tin roof with half the slates missing, having fallen to the ground under a makeshift telephone pole with a thousand wires.

His daughters stand in the doorway next to a dark figure. Lauren swirls her dress in one hand, waving it above her knees. The door closes behind them.

"What is that place?"

"Gunman safehouse."

"What!? Why would the girls have gone in there?"

"Yuh daughters, sir. Dem a different kind a' gyal."

John peers round the bend again. The door opens and a young man of thin-athletic build appears in cargo shorts and a dirty wife-beater. A black rifle strap over the young man's shoulder holds a gun, impressive to any civilian, even with its peeling paint.

"Dem a no-good bunch," says Grumpy, after removing his suit jacket and wiping the sweat from his brow.

"Should we call the police?"

"Huh, Babylon nuh help us."

"Well, we can't just stand here. What if something happens inside?"

John makes a darted run and ducks behind a pick-up truck on the other side of the street. He looks at Grumpy as if to say what do I do now?

Grumpy scrunches his lips and sucks in a breath. John has his eyes on the guard when a rock hits the wall. The guard looks at it, puzzled. 

Grumpy is praying with another rock between his palms, John sees him puff his cheeks and step out from the corner. This rock hits its target in the shoulder blade and the youth turns to search for the perpetrator. "A who dat?"

Grumpy heads back toward the market crowd when the guard walks past the pick-up. John crouches around the side, watching the guard while inching his way to the shanty building. When the coast is clear he rounds the building in a kneeled-sprint.

He can hear Yvonne's pretentious laughter from under the ledge of what is considered a window in this shantytown. Before he can take a peek, a body comes flying over him and crashes to the ground. The body in question belongs to another youth in a wife-beater, and that young man. Is. Out. Cold.

John jumps up from the surprise.

"Dad!?"

He turns to see his beautiful young twins staring at him in bright dresses with rosy cheeks on confused faces. Lauren is standing with her back pressed against a door while Yvonne holds a barbie-pink high heel in the air above her head. "What are you doing here?" she says.

"What am I doing here?" John points to himself. "What in the name of Christ are you doing here!?"

The trio glance from one another until there’s a banging on the other side of the door, shaking Lauren as she plants her feet into the ground, bending her knees, the heel-of-her-highs warping under the pressure.

"Quick! Let's get out of here," says John, taking off.

He comes back after realising his daughters didn’t follow. They're busy wedging the heel of Yvonne's apparent weapon under the seam of the door. "Come on!" insists John.

"Hold on." 

Yvonne shoves her other heel under and grabs Lauren's hand. The twins spring out the window—where John was standing with outstretched arms but had to leap out of the way before his babies landed on quick feet—and took off, heels or no heels.

Back at the hotel, the Hudson family debate morality.

"It's not a big deal," sighs Lauren. "It’s not like we’re strippers or anything."

"Not a big deal?" John says hysterically, "You're guns for hire! I mean, strippers would've been better."

"Heels for hire."

"What?"

"Technically we don't use guns."

John's had about enough of Yvonne's sarcasm. "Okay. Heels for hire."

"Great name for a strip club." mumbles Lauren. Her gem of humour brings a snicker to Samantha's throat, which she clears and straightens up after John gives her a distasteful look.

"So the ‘giveaway’ you girls won to get us here was actually faked by your employers?"

"Yes."

"And who are your employers?"

"If we told you that…we'd have to kill you," says Yvonne with as straight a face as she can manage.

John sighs, rubbing his brow in tired-frustration. "So...the inheritance money from Auntie Maureen's will...that was faked?"

"We don't have an Auntie Maureen."

"She could've been a great-Aunt."

"I'm sure she was," says Lauren.

"No, I mean she could've been your great-Aunt."

"You don't have an Auntie Maureen," Samantha informs, burning a hole in the side of John's head. The twins laugh in unison.

John sighs heavily. "And the scratch card with the five-grand we used to go to Vegas last year?"

Yvonne nods.

"Your winnings in Vegas?" asks John, hopefully.

"Jackpot baby!"

John rubs his eyelids. "The camping trip?"

The twins nod like arrogant bobbleheads on a truck-driver's dashboard.

"The all-expenses-paid school trip to London you girls won for that cheerleading competition?"

"That was real," says Yvonne.

"Courtesy of these fine asses," Lauren decides to add and the girls high-five.

"That's it," says John sternly, "no more vacations for this family. Now on, we drive to Brighton, that's it."

"John, let's talk about this," says Samantha softly.

"What is there to talk about? Our girls are killers!" he snaps. "You two don't leave this room for the rest of the trip."

$$$

The next afternoon, Grumpy drives the family out to the airport in silence.

Both twins' phones buzz simultaneously, an alert from their joint bank account: A sum of £10,000 was deposited into your checking account on Fri, 3rd of April at 11:55.

Another buzz follows with a message that reads: Primary Target eliminated.

The girls look at each other, confused.

—

The previous day a man named Clarence was cooking up a storm at his food cart when suddenly the cart was rocked back and forth. The honey sesame chicken he was preparing was knocked into the poke bowl his customer specifically told him was to have 'No sesame seeds'.

Clarence was flying high on the only herb he didn't use for seasoning—although he would love to—and therefore was confident enough that he’d picked out all the seeds that had fallen into the bowl and handed the order to his customer with a sunny-Jamaica smile.

That customer was a youth who worked for a badman named Spragga, a.k.a, Our Primary Target.

Spragga was fatally allergic to sesame.