The Fifth Circle

by Tricia Drammeh

  “There’s a lot of shit I can fire you for,” he said.

  It started in my cheeks—the warm, boiling sensation of fury—and spread throughout my body. My limbs felt heavy, but detached—as if they weren’t my own. My arms flew out in front of me and my legs moved involuntarily. I didn’t realize what had happened until I saw Jake on the ground.

  “You fucking psycho,” he yelled. Our co-workers flooded into the back room. Witnesses. I should have stopped, but I couldn’t. The monster was unleashed and he hungered for vengeance.

  I lifted Jake by his shirt and pushed him against the shelves, causing a stack of empty pizza boxes to tumble to the ground. I released my hold on his shirt and punched him. His hand flew up to his face, and blood coursed through his fingers. The red evidence of my infallibility emboldened me and I launched another attack. I punched him in the stomach and was rewarded by his quick intake of breath.

  Before I could punch him again, another ex-football playing co-worker named Mark grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back. I twisted away and kicked him, startling him enough to make him lose his footing. He crashed into a metal cabinet that held cleaning supplies. The contents rattled inside. I ran up to the front with Jake right on my heels. He leapt the counter and blocked my path to the door. A two-liter bottle of soda was sitting out on the counter top. I grabbed it and hurled it at him. He ducked, and the bottle bounced off the metal frame of the door and busted open, spilling its sticky contents all over the floor.

  “Jess, call the cops,” Mark bellowed right before he tackled me to the ground. His knees dug into my back, and this time I couldn’t squirm away.

  Jess scampered to the phone to make the 911 call. Everyone was against me, it seemed. No one ever took up for me. Only Alex. I started to cry when I thought of my plans for us. Now, I wouldn’t have a job. I’d never be able to support her.

  “Stop bawling, you pussy,” Mark said, twisting my arms behind me. I yelped in pain.

  After a few minutes of brutal arm twisting, I heard sirens in the distance. Jake smirked as the cops put the cuffs on me. I was pleased to see Jake was still bleeding. A customer gaped at me as the officer manhandled me through the door and out into the cold night air. I heard Jessica’s apology to the customer as the cop dragged me toward his car.

  Time became meaningless as I waited to be processed into the city jail. Several different officers interrogated me. I was photographed, fingerprinted, and booked. I sat inside a cell with a bunch of other people—the underbelly of society, it seemed. At last, I was able to make my phone call home.

  “Mom.” I began crying the moment I heard her voice. I turned my back so the police officer wouldn’t see my tears, but I knew he could hear my blubbering. “I’m in jail.” I quickly gave her a sanitized version of what had happened… how I’d been victimized, then arrested.

  “You can’t get me out. I’m on a twenty-four hour hold,” I explained. I could hear her sobbing on the other end of the phone. “I’m waiting to be charged. Probably assault. You’ll have to call a lawyer tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  It was Saturday night. Could she even get in touch with a lawyer on the weekend, or would I be stuck in jail until Monday? Right now, Monday seemed like a lifetime away.

  When I returned to the large, community-sized cell, I staked out a spot on a bench and curled up to go to sleep. Although I could hear the murmuring of a dozen conversations, I drifted off to sleep effortlessly. It was the first time I’d slept in days, and when I awoke, my twenty-four-hour hold was over. It was the wee hours of Monday morning and I was being moved to the Saint Edmunds County Correctional Facility.

  ***

  “I promise I’ll pay you back,” I said as my mother and the bail-bondsman led me outside into the cold early morning air. I inhaled the scent of the fresh snow beginning to fall.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” she said, glancing around as if she were afraid she’d see someone she knew.

  “I can give you the name of a good lawyer,” the bondsman said, sticking out his meaty hand to shake my mother’s. “He’s a good guy…works on a lot of assault cases.” A snowflake glistened on his balding head. I watched it melt while he rummaged in his wallet to pluck out a dog-eared business card.

  “Thanks. I’ll give him a call first thing tomorrow,” my mother said. “Let’s go, Sean.”

  Her car was parked a couple of blocks away. I followed her, wondering if I would be grounded, or if she would even try to punish me. After all, I was eighteen. I was an adult now—an adult who had to call his mommy to get him out of jail.

  “Did you get my truck?” I asked.

  “How would I be able to do that, Sean? I can’t drive two cars at once. Besides, it wasn’t a priority at the time. We’ll swing by Saint Ed’s Pizza and get it on the way home,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I hoped the guys from work didn’t mess with it. I leaned forward in the seat, mentally urging my mom to drive faster. I needed to get to my truck. My phone was there. I needed to call Alex. Better yet, I needed to see her.

  The parking lot was empty when we pulled up to Saint Ed’s Pizza—my truck sat out front. Thank God. The sons of bitches could have towed it—hell, I expected them to—but they didn’t. Probably because they knew they were in the wrong.

  I peeled out of the lot, afraid one of my former coworkers might show up and say shit to me. With shaking hands, I called Alex before I even cleared the parking lot. Please let her not be in school, I prayed.

  “Sean, oh my God, are you okay?” she burst out on the first ring. It felt so good to be needed.

  “I’m fine. It’s no big deal,” I said, feeling brave now that jail was behind me.

  “When your mom told me, I was so worried,” she cried. “I didn’t go to school today because I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.” Alex rarely missed school. For her to stay home just because of me—well, that was monumental.

  “I’ll be home in five minutes. Can you come over?”

  “I’ll be watching for you,” she said.

  I glanced at the time on my CD player. It was 8:32. We had about eight hours before her parents would be home. Eight hours to lie in bed. Eight hours to forget the fact that I now owed my mom a thousand bucks for the bondsman, that I had court dates scheduled, that I was facing probation, that I now had to hire a lawyer. Eight hours wasn’t long enough.

  Our joyful reunion in my driveway was marred by the massive guilt I felt. Holding her in my arms, I realized how badly I’d screwed up. I’d promised to take care of her—now I wouldn’t even be able to take care of myself. I’d lost my job and acquired a criminal record and the financial woes that went along with being in legal trouble.

  What did I have to offer Alex now? How could I convince her to leave the security of her parents’ home when I couldn’t even keep a job? Then, I remembered: if she became pregnant, nothing else would matter. Her dad wouldn’t let her spend another night under his roof. My mom wouldn’t care. Well, she might care, but she sure as hell wouldn’t kick us out on the street.

  Once Alex was pregnant, everyone would know she was mine: the assholes at school, the guys who thought they could stare at her, her father. Her sick, twisted father wouldn’t dare to touch her again once he realized she’d given herself to me. She was mine now. No one would mess with her ever again.

  Chapter 17- Alex

  Then was I still more fearful of the abyss:

  Because I fires beheld, and heard laments

  (Canto XVII, lines 121 & 122)

  Sean’s legal trouble was a constant worry in my mind, but I was afraid to broach the topic with him. Either he would think I was criticizing him and become defensive, or he would think I was questioning our relationship and would sink into despair. Either way, I couldn’t win, so I chose to ignore the issue unless he brought it up.

  “Can you leave early today?” he asked on our way to school.

  He didn’t want to go to school so soon after bei
ng released from his incarceration, but I refused to skip another day of classes. Sean threw a fit that I’d dared to go against his authority, but when I told him my dad might discover my truancy, he relented.

  “My mom’s making an appointment to see a lawyer and I want you to be with me.”

  “What time?” I didn’t want to miss class. We had a test in History and we were supposed to turn in our research paper outlines in English.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t call yet. She’s supposed to text me when she knows. So will you?”

  “I guess,” I whined, reluctant to tell him no.

  “What the hell does that mean? You’re supposed to be my girlfriend. You’re supposed to stand by me, but if you’re too busy, then don’t worry about it.”

  “Sean, that’s not…”

  “Or, maybe you’ve decided to hook up with someone else now that I don’t have a job. I should have known…as soon as the money dried up, you’d be off to greener pastures.”

  “That isn’t true!” I sulked against the passenger side window, rigid with anger and feelings of injustice. He was such a manipulative ass sometimes. I’d never asked him for one penny of what he’d earned. If he kept up with the attitude, there wouldn’t be a future. Sure, Sean had always been a good friend, but that didn’t mean I had to stay with him if he treated me like crap. Did it?

  My anger began to subside. Of course, he was stressed and upset. He didn’t mean what he said. He was just disappointed because I didn’t want to go. After everything he’d done for me, it was ungrateful of me to refuse to be there for him when he needed it most. He had every right to be angry. Shame washed over me when I thought about what a selfish person I’d become.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “I want to.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Please, can I go?”

  “I guess. I’ll text you as soon as my mom lets me know what time.”

  “Thanks,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. His anger was gone—for now. All I had to do now was wait for his summons, then find a way to sneak out of class. If my dad found out…well, I wouldn’t think about that. Some things were just plain unimaginable.

  ***

  By the time lunch hour came around, Sean had still not heard from his mother. He’d texted her twice, but she never responded. He hated to be ignored, so he was pissed off by the time I met him in the lunchroom.

  “Dude, where were you yesterday?” Cole asked.

  Sean smirked. “Jail.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. I kicked my boss’s ass at work on Saturday night, and they called the cops,” Sean bragged. “The asshole had it coming. It’s such bullshit.”

  “That’s crazy.” Cole’s eyes glowed with admiration.

  “Yeah, well…” Sean trailed off, shrugging as if he got in fights and went to jail every day. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Hopefully, my lawyer will be able to cut a deal so I don’t have to do any more time,” he said.

  Seriously? He wasn’t an informant for an organized crime family. From what his mother told me just after the arrest, Sean barely even hurt the guy—he split his lip, blackened his eyes, and bloodied his nose, but nothing more than that. She said Sean was distraught when he called her, crying and begging her to get him out. To hear Sean tell it, he practically killed a guy, then spent hard time in prison for his crimes.

  When the bell rang, I scurried from the lunchroom, anxious to escape Sean and his never ending stream of bullshit. Chemistry was an endurance test. The last class of the day arrived—English. I unzipped my binder and pulled out the outline due that day. I’d worked hours on it, and though I was no stranger to hard work, this assignment had been unusually challenging.

  I struggled for two weeks to come up with a thesis statement that hadn’t been totally overdone. At last, I was satisfied with my work—I could only hope Mr. Chalmers found it acceptable. He was notoriously picky and was a teacher most students tried to avoid. Even now, prior to class, he sat at his desk, brooding and irritable-looking. My palms began to sweat just thinking about what I would do if Sean summoned me from this very classroom. Mr. Chalmers wouldn’t accept any excuse to leave the room—not unless he saw blood, vomit, or a severed limb.

  Once the classroom filled up, Mr. Chalmers collected our outlines. We read the Canterbury Tales from our text books while he reviewed our efforts at breaking down and analyzing The Divine Comedy. Apparently, as a class, our efforts weren’t very impressive.

  “Julie Evans,” he snapped. The scraping of chair legs against the tiled floor and the shuffling of feet heralded his newest victim. “No. This is not acceptable. Let me tell you why.”

  My knees began to shake each time he dismissed a pupil and prepared to call another. Out of the last fifteen people he called, only one had emerged unscathed. He’d shot down thesis after thesis, ripped apart outline after outline.

  My cell phone vibrated just as he called my name. His eyes bored into me, so I couldn’t even remove my phone to look at it. All I could do was hope Mr. Chalmers was brief; otherwise Sean would never forgive me for missing his meeting with the lawyer. Surely his mother would give him more of a heads-up than, “Come right now.”

  Through my jeans pocket, I groped the side of my leg until I found the button that made the phone cease its rumble. With unsteady legs, I walked toward the front of the room and sat down in the seat next to Mr. Chalmers’ desk.

  “The outline is fine,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. “If I was going to allow you to use your current thesis—which I am not—your current outline is solid. However, I think you can do better than this canned statement I’ve seen used a dozen times.”

  The eternal torment suffered by the inhabitants of the fifth circle of hell is symbolic of the political climate, superstitious beliefs, and religious mores.

  “Don’t take the easy way, Alex. In this class, the easy path earns a C-. If you want to earn a B—or better—you need to stretch yourself. Try this for a thesis… Dante’s punishment for the sinners in the fifth circle of hell symbolizes… point one, two, and three.”

  “Um…” I stammered.

  “Alex, why do you think Dante chose to put the wrathful and the sullen together?” he asked, peering at me closely.

  The wrathful and the sullen. Or, the aggressive and the apathetic. The angry and the depressed. Why did Dante choose to put them together? The wrathful were the sinners. I could understand why they were being punished. The wrathful were the violent ones, the aggressors—my father.

  The apathetic were just too scared to make a choice, and the depressed can’t help the way they were. How should I know why Dante chose to punish them the way he did? Maybe people back then didn’t understand mental illness. Or, maybe Dante was just a lunatic. Who knew?

  I shrugged and struggled to formulate a response to his question. At last, I said, “Well, maybe the wrathful are in charge of punishing the sullen and vice verse.” What a stupid answer. It didn’t make any sense at all.

  My phone continued to vibrate in my pocket while I prayed Mr. Chalmers wouldn’t hear the tell-tale buzzing. He shot me a look of exasperation. At last, he cut me loose, and I rushed back to my desk to read my text messages.

  Appt is at 4

  Followed by… Im bored. Txt me.

  Then… U there?

  And, finally… Guess yr 2 good 2 talk 2 me.

  Fumbling under my desk, I rapidly typed out a reply. Sorry. With Mr C. Luv u.

  Whatever.

  Whatever? What did that mean? Was he mad at me now? If he was, the afternoon would be a serious strain. Sighing, I doodled in my notebook. Sometimes Sean was my own personal circle of hell.

  Chapter 18- Sean

  Upon my right hand I beheld new anguish

  New torments and new wielders of the lash

  (Canto XVIII, lines 22 & 23)

  After the appointment with the lawyer
, everything spiraled out of control. It turned out an assault charge was a way bigger deal than I thought. Lawyers were a shitload more expensive than I ever imagined. Yeah, I had a few bucks stashed away, but not enough to pay the stupid-ass lawyer my mom made me hire. You’d think for three-thousand bucks, he’d be able to get me out of anything, but he couldn’t even make any guarantees.

  “It depends on the District Attorney and what he wants to push for. Unfortunately, the assistant DA assigned to your case is aggressive on these types of charges, and she’s going for two counts of felony assault and one count misdemeanor property damage.”

  “What does that mean?” my mom asked.

  “He’s looking at up to two year’s jail time at worst, two years probation at best.” Mr. Phillips fiddled with his pen and stared gravely across the mahogany conference table.

  “Look,” I said. “Those assholes had it coming. They…”

  “Why don’t you tell that to the judge?” Mr. Phillips shrugged. “You know, the outcome is largely dependent upon your attitude. If you go to court acting like a punk, the judge will sentence you accordingly. If we can go to court and show that you have something going for you—good grades, extracurricular activities, a steady job—it will count in your favor.”

  Good grades? Try mediocre. Extracurricular activities? What did I look like—a chess club nerd? A steady job? Was he freaking kidding? Did he think I still had a job after I kicked my boss’s ass and wrecked the kitchen? I bit out a laugh and the lawyer gave me a strange look.

  “The hearing is set for April 15th, so we’ll meet here at my office on the 14th to go over everything.”

  “Will the judge make a decision then?” my mom asked.

  “No. Most likely, we’ll have to go to court at least a couple of times before it’s settled. It’s important to stay out of trouble until then,” Mr. Phillips said, fixing me with a hard stare.