I think I'd finally learned my lesson.
❚❚
ME AGAIN. I'M back.
Did you think about me when I was gone? No, of course you didn't. I'd know it if you had.
Sorry I took so long, but a lot has happened since that first message. A few minutes after I stopped recording the last video, someone knocked on my door. My first thought was to run, but I knew if I did it would be just like Lex said, I'd have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
I'd had enough of running.
So I made a choice. I opened the door.
It wasn't Lex. It was her: the woman with the scarred face. The woman from The Eye.
But it wasn't just her. Behind her, the hallway was filled with children, teenagers, and young adults. Their faces showed fatigue, but they didn't have the malnourished look of Ms. O'Shaughnessy's kids. I wasn't sure how to react until the young crowd parted, and Parker stepped out from among them.
"Hello, Mary," he said.
They all smiled then, as if on cue, mimicking his words like hopeful students addressing their new teacher.
"Hello again, Marigold. I'm Dr. Nadine Maven," the woman without a name introduced herself, and stuck out her hand.
I shook it.
She told me we had very little time. We were going underground. Off the grid. Project Blue Sky was meant to be about understanding the limits of the human mind, but Lex--she called him Dr. Lexington, which I thought was funny--and the military higher-ups had warped it into a killing machine. He'd lied to me when he said there was no one like me. There were others. Dr. Maven needed my help to round them up.
We had work to do, she told me. I packed up the few pairs of shirts and pants I'd gotten from The Healing Place, my laptop, and a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, both stolen from the public library a few blocks from my motel room, and followed them outside.
In the yellow school bus with tinted windows that drove us toward our final destination, an old Victorian asylum somewhere deep in the woods, Parker sat down beside me.
"Bet you thought you'd never see me again."
"I had a feeling," I told him with a grin.
"You were thinking about me."
I shook my head. "We were thinking about each other."
I put my hand on Parker's knee. He smiled, covering my hand with his. I tucked my head into the hollow of his shoulder and we sat that way in silence, watching the world flit past in the windows.
We each have our own rooms. We're free to come and go as we please, and the people in the small town nearby think we're students and teachers at a special school, which I suppose we are, but not the same kind of special they believe. Some of us provide therapy for drug addicts, veterans, people suffering from mental illness, and victims of abuse. Some help authorities track down murderers and missing persons. Others teach new recruits how to harness their own gifts.
The truth is I finally feel accepted. I finally feel like I'm a part of something bigger than myself. We are the children of The Eye. We can manipulate your thoughts and emotions. We can make you reveal your darkest secrets. We can cook your brain like a microwaved potato, but we can heal it if it's broken.
We use our powers for the Greater Good.
We are the Mentals.
DEAD MEN WALKING
PALOMINO WORKED THE night shift for the peace and quiet.
There were only two problems with this: one was his work partner, Jim Friedkin, just about the biggest class-A asshole you'd be likely to meet. The other was that executions at Alamosa County--or "Alamo," as they called it around here--were scheduled for the break of dawn, a tradition dating back to its early days.
According to a handful of old-timers Palomino talked to--those who would talk--when they used to fry Death Row prisoners at midnight the breakers would trip pretty regular, poor wiring being the likeliest culprit, plunging the entire prison into a Hell of pitchest black, subjecting anyone present to a horrific display of light and smells and sounds as the remaining electricity in the condemned's body made him dance a jig that would haunt any sane individual until his dying day.
Those same old-timers told Palomino about an inmate who'd caught fire in the chair back in 1921 or '22. It happened a handful of times but this particular instance had been the worst, according to consensus. The man's name was Harvey Jessop, a farmer convicted of killing half a dozen migrant farmhands in a rampage with a pitchfork.
Because Jessop was a pig farmer, the press had bestowed upon him the unfortunate nickname "The Pig-Man," though less imaginative writers had called him "The Pitchfork Killer," and less often, the more esoteric "Devil's Hand." They could have called Jessop "mud" for all the difference it made once the fire started, his agonized screams filling the execution chamber as thick as the black, choking stench of his charring flesh. According to Jeb Watson, a CO during those days, the human body smelled a lot like salted pork when it burned, and Harvey Jessop, aka the Pig-Man, had been no exception. It was an anecdote Palomino tried not to remember on the mornings Jenny cooked bacon and eggs for him and the kids.
With the lights out, civilians and officials scurried and screamed, trampling and vomiting on each other and themselves in their combined revulsion and panic, unable to escape the putrid-smelling smoke until someone managed to get to the breaker and the overhead lights were restored. Those old-timers said that had been the last straw. A few men had even quit over it and Palomino couldn't say he blamed them. From that day on, Retired Navy Col. Hap Shetland, the warden at the time, decided it would be best to wait until sunrise to fry up some cons.
Most of Alamo's people thought the Warden's decision had been purely practical. Citizens and politicians failed to appreciate the macabre, and it was in Warden Col. Shetland's best interest to play the game, his position being elected. Some claimed superstition: that Shetland believed killing a man so close to the witching hour was bound to create angry and vengeful spirits--and Alamo already had enough of these among the living. Whatever the reason, this new tradition stuck long after Alamosa County and the rest of the state gave up the electric chair in favor of lethal injection.
They called it a more humane death. George Palomino hadn't been around in those days, but he'd seen a few men ride Old Sparky. And since not one single prisoner in Florida (where electrocution was still on the menu) had chosen to ride the lightning since 2000, when the State had switched to the three-drug protocol, Palomino had to figure they believed it, too.
Given the choice, Palomino had to agree. At least that was how he'd felt before the execution of José Vasquez, when just about everything changed.
❚❚
JOSÉ VASQUEZ WAS a lifelong sinner who met Jesus Christ somewhere between two consecutive life sentences and the death penalty. Corrections Officers Jim Friedkin and George Palomino led the three-time murderer from his Death Watch cell through Z Block--where José's old cell remained empty, until the new prisoner was scheduled to arrive, not long after José shuffled off his mortal coil--and to the death chamber.
Palomino's peace and quiet had come and gone. Though the inmates watched quietly from their bunks, painfully aware they would soon be walking bowlegged in these same shackles toward their own end, it was difficult to stay Zen leading a man to his death, be he cold-blooded killer or not.
Seemed a little like overkill giving José The Ride the way things were going on the outside, at least to Palomino: the war, the economy in the shitter, the various epidemics, famine and AIDS and all our heroes caught doping or cheating on their wives. Sending José back to Jesus felt like more of a mercy these days than any sort of justice. José's Biblical horsemen were saddled up and ready to ride, and they would all face their own judgment soon enough. They were all dead men walking on Z Block (that was the reason for the name, after all--the signage and forms were labeled "BLOCK C"), whether they'd come to terms with the fact or not. It was only a matter of time.
Palomino didn't believe in the Rapture but he did believe in th
e law, and as an officer of said same his duty was to uphold it, no matter what his own morality said about them on a case-per-case basis. José's God required an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The good people at Alamosa County Prison were happy enough to oblige.
A shadow leapt up from the bunk in cell 7B and grabbed the bars with the speed of an animal in a cage. It was Mozey. His dark skin, lined with tattoos even on his shaved skull, glistened under the halogen lamps. "Hey, Vasquez," he hissed, "pass dis along to Jesus when you see him, uh?"
José, rail-skinny and so pale his skin just about looked yellow--he'd sicked up Red Vines all night, puking and shitting the color of fresh blood--cocked his bowed head to an angle as they passed. Mozey's horker caught him right between his dazed eyes.
That old dog Friedkin was unnaturally quick with a baton despite, or because of, his age. The hollow thock and crunch startled Palomino. Friedkin had freed the baton and slammed it across the fingers of Mozey's left hand before Palomino saw it coming. Mozey yelped and fell back into the darkness of his cell.
"That'll teach ya to blaspheme, faggot," Friedkin growled.
Mozey held his hand in his lap, rocking back and forth on his mattress. "Broke my fingers, cocksucker," he whimpered. With Mozey's accent it sounded more like Coke-suckah, which wasn't an insult as far as Friedkin was concerned. The veteran CO was a sugar junkie as much as some of these cons were just plain junkies, and he sucked down two medium-sized bottles of cola per shift.
Palomino--known to some as "Pal-o-mine"--knew a fair bit about most of the men on the Block and Mozey was no exception. Mozey wasn't his real name, for one: it was short for Mozambique, where his family had emigrated from when he was a child, since his real name was unpronounceable to most--Hell, Mozambique was a tongue twister to some of these halfwits. Mozey'd been caught stealing a car when he was fourteen. He'd killed the cop, and because he'd killed one of their own, the State had tried him as an adult. He claimed self-defense, that Officer Mike Daniels, a rookie cop with a wife and two kids at home, had used excessive force. Mozey had beaten Officer Daniels into a coma with the steering wheel lock, what they used to sell on TV as "The Club." The charge of aggravated assault became Murder One when Officer Daniels died in the hospital a few weeks later. When they'd transferred Mozey here, his skin was so thoroughly cut and bruised he looked like an extra from Roots, aside from the tattoos.
Same old story. Whether it was sad or a fine example of the law protecting upstanding citizens from harm was up to the individual. Palomino figured it lay in the gray area between: as a law enforcement officer, he thought it was in his best interest to give the good guys the benefit of the doubt.
Still, he didn't think Mozey deserved to have his hand broken for what amounted to a minor beef, and he planned to tell Friedkin so as soon as they were done shift. A power struggle between two hacks still on the Block would only make one or the other of them look weak in front of the inmates, and that was never a good idea.
"What's the hold-up?" Captain Jepson said, leaning her head out the guard station window.
Rather than answer, Palomino nudged Vasquez along, and Friedkin followed with a final snarl at Mozey's cell that told of more coming if Mozey dared made a stink to the higher-ups.
The three of them reached the gate, and Donna Jepson buzzed them through. She was heavyset with short-cropped hair, skin as dark as most of the men on the Block. Palomino had always thought it must be tough for her being a woman in this job, tougher still being African-American knowing what she must about the skewed correctional system. It was hard not to admire her, particularly with the way she was treated by the inmates, as a piece of meat for masturbation material despite--or because of--her reputation as a hardass. Married, no kids. Kids or not, Palomino couldn't imagine letting his own wife work here. This was no job for a woman. No job for a man, really, short of options. Palomino himself had pretty much been railroaded into it. In Jasper, FLA, without a college degree, it was either work the prison or in the steel mill, and his asthma had ixnayed that.
Z Block's gate slammed closed behind them. Palomino and Friedkin turned Vasquez to face that long, dim hallway in which he had spent much of the last thirteen years of his life. He didn't appear to be homesick. His expression was entirely blank. Made his peace, Palomino guessed. Either that or his mind had shut down from fear. It did that to some of them: their eyes just glazed over, their faces slack and devoid of emotion, like deer caught in a set of onrushing headlights.
Donna came out of the station to give José a thorough pat-down, her duty as Death Watch Supervisor for Vasquez. Some of the COs on Z Block figured it was a PR move by Warden Cole, putting a woman in charge. It wasn't like she was any more or less capable than the rest of them. Palomino and Friedkin had already checked José before removing him from his cell, but this was procedure. Measure twice, cut once, Palomino's dad used to say. The last thing the Warden needed was a prisoner slashing his own throat with a sharpened toothbrush or a knife fashioned out of reinforced glass that he'd somehow managed to hoop up his ass crack, especially in front of a live studio audience.
Palomino considered José Vasquez's pitiful life as they strapped him onto the gurney. Grown up dirt poor, seventh child of migrant workers, never knowing a home for longer than a season at a time. He told Palomino he'd lived in Alamosa longer than anywhere, making it the closest thing he'd ever had to a home. At the time it had struck Palomino as one of the saddest things he'd ever heard. He'd been a rookie then, and had heard a lot of sob stories since, not many of them sadder than that. For some reason the men on Z Block felt they could confide in him. It was why they called him "Pal-o-mine." Dale McKittrick, the closest CO George had to a friend, said it was because Palomino had an honest face. Friedkin told him it was more likely they knew how to spot a sucker.
Even José's last meal was pitiful: three McRib sandwiches, two super-sized French fries, a large Pibb Xtra, and a big bag of Red Vines. He'd eaten the entire meal, sucking a finger to stick to the grains of salt at the bottom of the fry box, licking the leftover barbeque sauce straight off the greasy cardboard. It had cost more than the twenty dollars allotted for the condemned's last meal--the delivery charge was five bucks, plus a buck for a tip--but Palomino had paid the extra three dollars and fifty-eight cents out of pocket. Maybe he was a sucker after all, but the way Palomino figured, if he was about to be put to death he would have wanted someone to do the same for him.
He and Friedkin wheeled José into the execution chamber, Donna walking heavily just steps behind. Once inside, a pleasant-looking female EMT and a grim specter of a man in doctor's whites went about the business of unbuttoning José's pale blue shirt and attaching electrodes to his smooth, jaundiced chest. They found a fat juicy vein in the crook of José's left elbow--Palomino'd always considered that a strange phrase, the crook of the elbow, up there in the category of Strange Phrasings with a murder of crows and bite the bullet--which the nurse swabbed with alcohol.
José stared at the ceiling while they worked on him, never once looking at his executioners. He didn't so much as flinch as the needle penetrated his flesh. Was he still too dazed by his approaching death to notice, Palomino wondered, or did the pain of a little prick pale in comparison to whatever bug had hit him during the night, making him puke up his last meal, and giving his skin that waxy yellowish appearance, like a man carved from margarine?
Palomino didn't know. What he did know was the sight of blood filling the flash chamber had always made him queasy. He looked away, accidentally catching the eye of Deputy Warden Adams. The nasty little pissant had dressed him down for a minor uniform violation last week, and of course he'd had to stand there and take it, Friedkin snickering to Donna in the guard station and Donna staring at her feet, just waiting for the situation to end. Palomino couldn't afford to lose this job, not with the way things were on the outside, not with Jenny and the boys to take care of and a baby on the way, but he didn't have to like it.
Adams gave him
a slight, expressionless nod. Palomino looked off, pretended he didn't see, a snub that would likely put him further in the doghouse. Fuck it. All he had to do was win this week's lottery and he'd be free and clear. No more taking orders from self-important prigs like Adams, no more making excuses for mean little tyrants like Jim Friedkin.
How did that jingle go? Just Six Little Numbers Could Change Your Life?
Where the hell was the Warden anyhow, leaving Adams in charge? Most likely Vasquez's case wasn't enough of a PR win for him to show. Nobody cared whether José lived or died except the usual die-hard Liberal zealots, the witnesses, and the few illegals who'd heard about the case on the six o'clock news. Palomino had arrived last night expecting the usual picketing that came with these events, but he'd driven through without any trouble.
Deputy Warden Adams checked the restraints, dress shirt buttoned so tight around his throat Palomino could see the arteries throbbing under the stubble on his neck. He nodded to the doctor, to Donna, then went and opened the blinds to the witness room.
Behind the window men and women sat muttering to each other, sweating through their clothes and fanning themselves even though the sun had just barely risen. The air conditioning in this part of the building always seemed to be on the fritz, the whole damn wing as hot as the Devil's nutsack. As the blinds rose a reverent sort of silence fell over the room, as before a sermon.
The faces he met once the blind went up had always bothered Palomino. The stabbing looks of hatred had never troubled him, they were expected. It wasn't the keen interest of the morbidly curious (the ghouls), or the press, either. It was the hope on the faces of family and friends of the victims, hope that bearing witness as the murderer of their loved one was put to death would offer a sense that justice had been done, a closure this monster's imprisonment had failed to bring. Yet more often than not they would leave disappointed, disillusioned, heads hung low, ashamed of their own desperate hunger for vengeance.
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