No Fear

by Nolon King

  An interesting choice of words. Did he know someone green-lit him?

  Jasper decided to be direct. “The Aryans asked me to kill you. Gave me two days to decide.”

  Wally was uncharacteristically quiet. Then he sighed. No asking why or freaking out like Jasper had imagined.

  “And? Are ya?”

  “No.”

  “Then they’ll find someone else to do it.”

  “So, you saying I should?”

  Wally shook his head. “No.”

  “Why do they want you dead? Who wants you dead?”

  “Someone’s spreadin’ shit how I might’a snitched on someone outside. A friend of Young Luther. But I didn’t say shit.”

  “You should request protective custody.”

  “They ain’t gonna give me protective custody ’cuz I ain’t told them shit. See, I think the cops who questioned me are hoping I’ll talk. They’re spreading rumors, thinking I’ll go to them.”

  “Then maybe you should. If you’ve got something they want, trade it.”

  “I ain’t no snitch.”

  “They’re gonna kill you, Wally.”

  “Then at least I ain’t died a rat. Rather die with honor than live being a snitch bitch.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “All a man’s got is his name.”

  “What good is your name on a gravestone?”

  “It’s about legacy, man. I want my name to mean something to my sons. Don’t want my boys thinkin’ their old man was a fink.”

  “But people already think you did it, though. So, what’s the point? Why not tell the cops what they want to know and get protective custody.”

  “Ain’t you listening? I got kids. I run to the cops, someone might take a shot at my lady or my boys. They wanna come at me, let ’em, but I ain’t havin’ other people get hit over my bullshit.”

  Jasper shook his head. He could understand wanting to protect people on the outside. But resigning yourself to dying because someone else thinks you gave them up was losing your life without a fight.

  His efforts to fly under the radar were now null and void. He was on these fuckers’ radars with his own shit to deal with. If he refused to kill Wally, the bull’s-eye landed on his back. How long until someone shivved him in the yard, mess hall, or shower?

  How long before he had to sleep with one eye open because his next podmate got the same offer? Most people couldn’t be blamed for seeing that offer for exactly what it was — one that couldn’t be refused.

  Jasper was in the rare position of not knowing what to do. Worse, he couldn’t talk to his wife, his daughter, or his old mentor, Lenny Barnes. His meds were clouding his thoughts, blocking his visions.

  While the pills were in his system, he was on his own.

  Jasper leaned against the shed wall and watched everybody from a distance.

  An overwhelming sense of dread washed over him, like something awful was seconds away. But his meds had dulled his perception so much, he also barely knew up from down.

  One of the COs, a big, strapping country boy named Dalton Springs, walked the yard with his hands on his belt like a cowboy, waiting for someone to give him a reason to whip out his baton.

  Dalton Springs was square-jawed with a dirty blond crewcut and icy blue eyes that always seemed a bit hazy, if not red. Always chewing on a pen cap, though if Jasper had to guess, the man preferred tobacco.

  As Dalton walked past some of the men in the 904 Mafia who were working out at the weights, he cast a threatening stare at them.

  A couple of the guys shot him sideways glares, but nobody directly challenged him. Dalton had a rep for knocking heads whenever violence erupted. Any excuse to whoop some ass.

  Jasper saw movement in his peripheral vision, someone approaching him on the track.

  He flinched then relaxed. It was only Crazy Gary, an insane-looking old white dude with long, straggly gray hair, a meth face, and matching teeth. The guy was forever talking to himself.

  He looked at Jasper, stopped dead in his tracks, and narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  Jasper looked side to side, as though Crazy Gary might be talking to someone else. In all his time here, the crazy fuck hadn’t said anything to him. In fact, he’d never seen the guy talking to anyone but himself or the voices in his head.

  “What?” Jasper asked, confused.

  “Not you. Her.”

  Her?

  Jasper turned, half expecting to see a woman, but there was nobody near him.

  Crazy Gary stared for a long moment then finally smiled, nice and wide, like the two of them were co-conspirators agreeing on a mutual lie.

  “Ah, okay, pal. I gotchya.” He winked then went on his way.

  “Whatever, crazy fuck,” Jasper muttered under his breath.

  Someone else was approaching.

  Jasper turned to see Kenn coming, slowly, casually.

  “So, what’s it gonna be?”

  Jasper looked the man up and down before settling on his eyes, burning with hate and smug with power. He was untouchable in here. He wasn’t used to people saying no.

  “Do I have a choice?” Jasper asked.

  Kenn shook his head.

  “No,” Jasper said.

  Kenn gave him an uncomfortable smile. “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  Kenn laughed, then turned.

  Jasper struck, quickly — shiv at the man’s neck, in and out, too fast for Kenn to do shit about it. He was already slipping down, blood spurting everywhere.

  A sense of movement preceded the shouts — the Aryans raced over to intervene. Jasper tightened his grip on the shiv as the first came at him.

  The man collapsed before he could connect. Behind him stood an officer with a stun gun. A half-dozen more followed, moving in to prevent a riot and subdue Jasper.

  He dropped the shiv and fell to the ground in surrender.

  Dalton got there first, swinging his baton on Jasper’s back and ribs, hard enough to break something.

  He crawled into a ball, trying to make it clear that he wasn’t fighting back.

  “I’m workin’ a double and you pull this shit?” Hernandez grabbed Jasper, so rough it only compounded the pain in his already aching back and ribs. Still, yanking him out of there probably saved Jasper from an even more brutal beating from Dalton.

  Hernandez brought him to the hole, a row of cells away from all the others and under tighter security.

  Mission accomplished. Jasper would be safe. For a while.

  A lockdown might give him a few more days, but not much beyond that.

  Now he was living on borrowed time.

  Chapter 5 - Mallory Black

  “Where the fuck is this place?” Mal muttered to herself as the SUV bounced hard on a pothole, the road neglected and bumpy. It was the only paved street in Desanto, a tiny and mostly abandoned town.

  Mal passed a poverty-stricken, dirt-covered kid in flip-flops standing in front of his run-down house. The boy was staring at Mal, disinterested enough to make her wonder if he’d ever known joy. He held a deflated red ball in his right hand. An old woman sat on a swing behind him, knitting.

  The kid met Mal’s gaze. His expression conveyed the desperation of a boy born in the wrong place to the wrong parents, maybe stuck here forever. It pained her to drive past.

  Though the town was called Desanto, Mal always thought it should’ve been called Despair. It was one of the older towns in Creek County, barely a dot on the map. Once home to a hundred and fifty or so cement plant workers, anyone with any sense fled the shitburg after the plant closed a quarter century ago. Remaining residents were either stubborn, delusional in hopes life might one day return, or had surrendered in full. The only trait they all shared was that they were stuck, in both a time and place that had passed them by long ago.

  On the vary rare occasions when Mal had driven through town, it felt like she was passing through a fading sepia memory. One main street with o
ld storefronts shuttered long ago. A handful of homes further down, most left to rot or torn to lumber. The cemetery was filled with ancient death and too many weeds.

  Her address was a boarded-up church at the end of the street.

  Mal arrived first. As she climbed out of her car, Mike pulled up. Skippy was calling it in when she met them at their vehicle.

  She drew her gun and approached the church entrance. Mike and Skippy split up, heading around to the rear.

  They communicated via radio. Mike reported a board torn away from one of the windows.

  Mal and Skippy met up with him.

  He nodded, taking the lead as he crawled inside the church through the remnants of a window, shotgun with mounted light piercing the darkness ahead.

  Skippy took a position outside in case the suspect was still there and decided to make a run for it.

  Mal followed Mike through the window, flashlight in her left hand, right hand aiming her pistol, turning the beam toward the rear of the church as Mike took the front.

  She raked her light over a debris-littered floor, broken pews, then a grafitti-covered wall to her right before she heard Mike gasp.

  Mal spun east, toward the front of the church and the altar, where her beam blended with her partner’s.

  Horrified, she froze. Yelped without meaning to. Her throat washed in copper, her pulse burned with the tears in her eyes.

  Any hope of finding Alice alive was gone in one cold shot to the gut.

  The young girl was nailed to a large wooden cross, naked, arms spread like the Messiah, legs bound with cord or rope or something dark. She’d been cut open from chest to crotch, and her guts spilled onto the stage. A red candle burned in each of her eyes.

  Mal spun around, searching for any sign of the sick fuck responsible for this. Mike was already on his radio, asking Skippy if anyone had come out of the church.

  No one had.

  Mike called in the murder in as Mal finished sweeping the interior, careful not to destroy any evidence. She headed toward the narthex, making certain their suspect wasn’t hiding in the vestibule.

  She searched for the killer or evidence, her mind strobing with images of Jessi and Ashley, her daughter murdered by a monster and Jessi traumatized forever.

  Even after all this time on the job, even after having such horrible violence personally affect her, Mal still couldn’t fathom what could make someone hurt another person. Especially a child, and especially in such a gruesome way. Not that understanding could ever prevent the atrocity.

  It wasn’t as if these demons walked around announcing their intentions or even looked like the ogres they were. These monsters hid among men. Neighbors, doctors, politicians, teachers, and camp counselors — they could be anyone.

  Parents couldn’t exactly hide their children from the world.

  But still, Mal wished she’d held a tighter leash. She should have never let Ashley walk home, even with a friend. She should have picked her up from school, or Ray could have done it.

  They left their daughter vulnerable instead.

  In the end, it was Mal’s fault Ashley had been murdered, and there was nothing she could do to ever pretend otherwise or get over her pain.

  Mal returned to the nave. She joined Mike and Skippy at the altar, where they were taking preliminary crime scene photos before the forensics team arrived.

  Standing among the pews, she couldn’t take her eyes off the horror nailed to the cross. This child, who had been a person just hours ago, was now reduced to some sick fuck’s prop. One of them would have to tell Alice’s mother the horrible news. Part of Mal would rather die.

  “What the hell are these things on her?” Skippy took a closer look at the girl’s side.

  Mal couldn’t see what he was staring at and started toward the altar.

  “Looks like some kind of symbols,” Mike said. “This guy a Satanist or something?”

  A musical chime, thin and tinny, startled her. She spun around, gun still drawn, then realized it was a ringing. Had the killer dropped his phone?

  Could they be so lucky?

  She followed the tone to one of the pews where she found a phone sitting on a piece of paper with large black letters.

  DETECTIVE BLACK.

  What the fuck?

  She grabbed it and answered.

  “Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” It was the same man from earlier.

  Mal wanted to jump through the phone and rip out his fucking throat with her teeth. “You said we’d find her alive!”

  An infected, raspy laugh. “I said you had to hurry.”

  “Bullshit. She was dead when you called.” Mal was making an assumption, of course. She hadn’t examined the body, but it seemed unlikely he was able to stage such a scene, make the call, and get away in such a short amount of time. Unless he’d done everything but gut her.

  Had they really just missed saving the girl?

  She wanted to vomit, but Mal had to engage with the killer, not show him she was shaken. “What is this? A statement?”

  “This is merely the beginning.”

  “The beginning of what?” Mal asked him.

  Is he planning to kill more people? More kids? Stage more horror shows like this?

  The monster paused, either for drama or thought, before he finally answered. “This, Detective Black is the beginning of the end. Where the boundaries fall, and all will be revealed.”

  “When what—” Mal started.

  But the monster was already gone.

  Chapter 6 - Howard Loomis

  Two weeks ago …

  Howard only had twenty minutes for lunch before his next appointment. His last install had gone an hour over, and he had another two ahead of his next break. He was starving and, of course, the line at Sloppy’s drive-thru was insanely long.

  He sighed as he pulled his Titan Security van into a parking spot. After climbing out of the vehicle and stretching his aching back, he shuffled inside the joint then got in line.

  There were only two groups in front of him — an elderly couple at the register and a pair of petite college-aged girls. A black girl wearing tight jeans and a tank top stood next to a tanned brunette in denim shorts and an itty-bitty red bikini top. They chatted to each other while scrolling bullshit on their phones.

  Howard looked down at the brunette, admiring the tan lines peeking out from under her top. He wanted to see more, wished he could reach out and pull her shirt aside.

  The brunette absentmindedly adjusted her top as she scrolled through her LiveLyfe feed, pulling it out and up a bit, giving him a glimpse of more white flesh and a blushing nipple. Her tits were big, begging for his gaze.

  Howard felt a rush of excitement as she continued adjusting the top. He imagined her turning to him, taking it off, then begging him to grab her tits.

  What I wouldn’t give to just touch them.

  He would play this fantasy in his head when masturbating later, before descending into a shame spiral in which his mother would scold him for being such a wicked little masturbator, reminding him yet again that he was doomed to spend an eternity in hell.

  Howard wished he could pull out his camera and capture a photo or video to help him remember her better, but he was in his work uniform, and civilized society viewed men sneaking creep shots as disgusting or, in the case of men attempting to get upskirts, as lawbreakers.

  If only polite society knew how many of his customers’ webcams he accessed from his home, how many he watched as he imagined the things he would do to them. How many women had their most intimate moments recorded by him while they were alone or in bed with their lovers.

  Howard wanted to remember this girl, to record her. But he couldn’t. He needed his job too much for a bust. So, he stared instead, doing his best to commit her perfect tits to memory.

  Until she turned and caught him.

  Damn it.

  Time froze as the brunette stared him up and down, the slow crawl of her gaze
allowing her to document his shame and horror in morbid detail.

  Her mouth distorted in a disgusted snarl, her eyebrow arched. “Yuck.”

  The black girl looked at her friend then at Howard. They laughed before moving up to the register.

  Howard turned away, his cheeks hot with anger and embarrassment. Anger at the level of disgust she had for him and her contemptuous laugh. Embarrassment that he’d been caught practically drooling like a weak-minded idiot.

  Who the hell does she think she is?

  She was young, fit, tan, and beautiful. He wasn’t even close to her type, or anyone’s. At six foot six and four hundred and nine pounds, Howard Loomis was an unsightly giant.

  His greasy dark hair was thinning, and he had a fat face. His piggish nose drew ridicule from girls and had ever since childhood. Coke-bottle glasses made his brown eyes look cartoonishly large. He was practically the poster child for Fat Virgin Thirty-Something Losers. He had a job and a house, but the gig was unfulfilling and the home wasn’t his. He still lived with his mother in a shitheap that looked ancient a decade ago.

  The brunette wasn’t the kind of girl who would ever give Howard a chance. Judging by her appearance, the superficial chatter with her friend, and the way she was glued to her phone, she was just another moron in a world that reveled in stupidity.

  But that world was about to change.

  The End was coming, and girls like this would be wise to be kind to Howard. Because when The End came, he would be one of the few to thrive.

  Howard wasn’t sure when The End was coming. Mister K said it would be soon. But he’d been promising that for many years. For now, he was meant to suffer and to learn, to prepare himself, to follow Mister K’s teachings. His suffering would end soon, and his loyalty would be rewarded. Howard would thrive in this new world and see his righteousness rewarded.

  He smiled, imagining girls like these writhing in misery as the demons spilled forth from the depths of Hell and split them where they stood. See how their silly little iPhones and their overpriced lattes would help them then.

  The brunette glanced back to see if Howard was looking as her friend ordered, but he refused to give her the pleasure. He no longer found her attractive. The girl’s ugly demeanor had twisted her into a troll. He wouldn’t let her suck his dick if she begged.