by Lake, Keri
“Okay, Fox.”
With deep, easy breaths through my nose, I closed my eyes and sobbed.
* * *
The sound of crying reached through the dark void inside my head, pulling me into the present.
Eli whined some garbled words, but I could make out a compounded sound: “Momma!”
It brought tears to my eyes, and I curled tighter into a ball, as a cold chill swept over my skin. His mewling reminded me of a trapped kitten calling for its mother. His crazy threats of before had whittled down to the desperate cries of a child.
“Sh-sh-shut yer goddamn mouth!” Gideon’s voice sliced through my sadness like a poison-dipped knife, blackening my thoughts with rage.
Still, Eli sobbed, choking and gurgling, in between crying out for his mom. I wished I could take him away from it all. I wished I could shield him from the pain and whatever shit they’d put him through.
Most of all, I wished I could kill Fox and Gideon.
“I s-s-s-said, shut the f-f-f-fuck up!”
Duct tape still covered my mouth, or I’d have told Stuttering Stan to go f-f-f-fuck himself.
“I’ll g-g-g-g-ive you something to cry about!” His shouts had no effect on Eli’s cries, and I could hear the frustration bleeding into Gideon’s voice. Threads of tension that slithered across the room, wrapping itself around my spine. He was about to do something very bad. “I f-f-f-ucking hate you. You got what you d-d-d-deserved, you piece of shit! Who’s laughing now, huh? Who’s laughing n-n-n-now!”
I screamed into the tape, and, though mine was muffled, together, Eli and I rose above Gideon’s shouts.
“Sh-sh-shut up!” Hard thumps sounded like Gideon kicking the door to Eli’s closet, over and over, until I no longer felt like we had the upper hand, and I quieted.
Eli kept on.
A crack echoed inside the room, bouncing off the walls and ringing in my ears. Another pop. And another.
Something slammed. Something thunked. The bedsprings jangled and squealed. And through the shuffling and cries, I noticed one thing.
Eli had gone silent.
Light blasted into the room, as Fox slammed through the door. “What the fuck did you do, boy! What did you do?”
“I-I-I-I accidentally sh-sh-shot ‘im! It was an a-a-a-accident, Fox, I swear!”
My muscles turned cold, frozen. Ice crystals branching from where the stab of pain struck my chest, out to my limbs that’d gone numb.
I waited to hear they’d gotten it wrong.
The bullet didn’t hit him! He’s okay!
Shuffling. Squeak of the door.
“Shit. Ah, shit!” The disappointment in Fox’s voice failed to confirm it in my head.
Even if the silent pause had grown so deafening I wondered if I’d lost my ability to hear, I didn’t believe it.
Another minute passed, though, and Eli remained silent. Not a cough, a gag, or a moan. As if he’d left the room entirely.
For one brief moment, I envied him.
My whole body trembled and shuddered, a sickness rising up from stomach. I breathed through my nose, but couldn’t get enough air. A scream sat trapped at the back of my throat as the pressure built inside my head, so intense, it felt as if my face would explode any moment.
“How the fuck’d you get my gun?”
“You—” A loud clatter followed, and startled my muscles.
Tears gathered in my eyes, the sting shooting up my nose, summoning more.
“Eli!” I screamed incoherently through the tape. “Eli!”
The snot and tears blocked the air, and I gagged and sniveled, crying out for my best friend. My brother. Thoughts of him lying there, his mouth covered in bloody gauze, eyes dull and vacant, was unimaginable to me.
Curling myself into a tight ball, I allowed the misery take over me, and fell blissfully into the crackling blackness waiting to pull me under.
* * *
C’mon, boy. Git up.” The voice scraped down my back like razor blades across my bones.
The door of my cage sat open, and all I could make out was Fox’s shadow on the wall in front of me.
Like a bull seeing red, I twisted around and charged forward on my knees, growling and screaming, with my hands bound behind my back, my mouth taped. Once out of the cage, I bounded toward him, but stopped short when his hands gripped my shoulders and, with little effort, held me back.
“Calm down, son.”
My muffled words wouldn’t break through the tape, which only brought a new round of frustrated tears.
Fox tore the tape away from my mouth, and the second I was free of the barrier, I charged again.
“I’m not your fucking son! You piece of shit! You killed him! You killed him!”
A cold hard slap smarted my cheek, and stars floated before my eyes as I stumbled back a step.
“Now, you best calm yourself, boy, or I’m gonna have cut out your tongue.”
Part of me didn’t care if he did, but the wiser part knew that if I made it out alive, I’d need my tongue to send the rotten bastards to prison. I breathed hard, staring down at the worn, gray concrete floor, and the streaks of blood where they’d dragged Eli’s body out of the room.
After a minute of holding my shoulders still, he dipped his head, guiding my attention back to him. “You got your wits about ya again, now?”
I didn’t answer, and instead ground my teeth, with a thousand thoughts running through my head, of how I’d kill him if I could.
“I’m gonna need you to come with me.” Fox disappeared behind me and took hold of my bound hands. Cold metal hit my skin, and in the next snap, my hands were free.
I spun around, fist drawn back for a punch, but he caught my wrist in his hand, propping the blade beneath my chin. The faint burn was only a fraction of the pain the blade promised.
“I don’t need another death on my hands, boy. But I will. I swear I’ll cut your throat where you stand.”
My jaw trembled as I glared back at him, wondering if that would be best. If I’d be better off letting him end me right there.
“You don’t want that. Trust me.” Lowering the blade, Fox swapped his knife for the gun, holding the pistol loosely in his hands. “You try anything, and you’ll be swallowing gun powder,” he said, holding the gun in front of me. “I find killing to be a waste, but I won’t hesitate. Now walk.”
“Why haven’t you killed me already?” Gun at my back, I made my way through the basement and up some stairs toward a door.
“I’m in a pickle. See, I got a murder on my hands. One I hadn’t planned on, but the cops, they don’t see things objectively, sometimes. They see what they need to see.”
Two rusted, abandoned trucks sat next to a newer red tow truck. Beyond that, a machine stood off in the distance, beside which Gideon waited, with his hands tucked into his pockets. Eli lay on the ground in front of him, and Trevi the Joker stood off to the side.
What I wouldn’t have given to steal Fox’s gun and shoot all three of them dead.
Behind them, the big yellow contraption sat quiet, the arm of it hanging off the back, arched over a bonfire crackling below it.
“So I need some … insurance.” Fox brought me to a stop in front of Eli, who lay on the ground, eyes closed, as if he were peacefully sleeping.
Tears blurred his face, and I waited for him to open his eyes, to sit up and tell me to quit fucking crying like a pansy.
Instead, he lay unmoving. Lifeless.
“I got a question for ya, son.” Fox lit a cigarette behind me, the menthol scent of it crumpling my stomach. That acrid smell would forever remind me of the dirty prick’s dry, cracked face. “You got a home?”
Fuck you. I didn’t answer.
“Don’t piss me off, boy.”
The warning in his voice no longer scared me like before, but I answered just the same. “Yeah.”
“You got a momma there? A daddy? Granddaddy? Suga’ momma with a French poodle? Who’s waitin’ on you?�
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“My dad. And I guarantee he’ll come looking for you.” I kept my eyes on Eli’s blood-stained hands, wondering if I’d reached the point of desperation, just as he had, fantasizing of things that would likely never happen. A quick glance around, toward the buildings that stood off in the distance, and the suffocating quiet, confirmed that my father would never find me.
“I’m pissin’ in my boots right now. Really.”
A plume of smoke drifted past me, and I dared a glimpse of Eli’s sleeping face, coming to tears again. Red streaks marred his cheek, where he must’ve scratched himself to remove the mask with the headphones he’d worn. Blood had dried to his mouth, his chest, his leg, and I could just make out wet strands of hair at the side of his head, where the bullet must’ve hit his skull.
“You wanna see your daddy again?” Fox’s voice had become a distant echo, but I focused on his words, letting him pull me into his mind games.
My nose burned, as I fought to hold back tears.
“Y-y-y-yer not letting him go … are ya, F-F-F-Fox?” Gideon stumbled forward in my periphery. “We c-c-could keep him, instead.”
“And do what? Fuck ‘im on camera, like you and my little pervert brother?” Fox snorted and hocked a gob of spit behind me. “That lawyer fucked up, crossing me. So I’m gonna make his asshole pucker some by lettin’ this one go.” He poked the back of my shoulder, and my muscles flinched on instinct. “You wanna go back home, don’t ya? ‘Course you do. I promised to let you go, and I’m gonna. But I need some insurance. ‘Slike I told ya that first day, remember?” Though he paused, he didn’t wait for me to answer the question. “I said the odds of you telling someone lessen when you take part in the crime. See, it’s easy to say, I won’t tell,” he prattled on. “But then you’ll have thoughts of your friend, sweatin’ and pissin’ in your bed. And end up tellin’, anyway. But how the hell you gonna look a cop in the face and tell him ole’ Giddy boy shot ‘im dead, when you was the one who helped dispose of the body?”
A sharp pain struck my chest, and I slanted a glare in his direction. “What did you say?”
He looked past me and nodded, prompting me to follow the path of his gaze.
Joker stepped toward the machine, turned a key and pulled a lever, setting the contraption into a rumbling clatter of metal. He lifted a branch from the ground beside the bonfire and chucked it into the spinning blades. A buzzing sound vibrated across my bones, as I watched the small bits fly out of the arm of it on the other side, landing onto the flame.
I shook my head with the realization of what he expected of me. “No. Please. Don’t make me do this.”
“I ain’t gonna beg, son.” Fox racked the chamber, and raised the gun to my head. “Bullet like this will make one hell of a mess of that skull.”
“Do it,” I taunted. “Shoot me.”
Huffing, he tossed his cigarette onto the ground, stomping it out with his toe. “I am a man of my word. I will let you go. You wanna go free, don’t ya? I mean, it’d truly suck if your daddy had to find you laid out in the woods, with your head blown off. Little bits of skull and brains. That’ll be the visual he goes to bed with every night. And every day he’ll punish himself a little more, until he can’t handle the visuals anymore. And then it’ll be his own brains spattered on the floor.” He pointed the gun toward Eli. “So you pick up your friend here and help toss him in there.”
“No.”
“You love your daddy?”
“Shoot me.”
“Do you love your daddy!” The anger in Fox’s voice thundered through my skull, and I flinched at his words.
Still, I refused to answer.
A gunshot kicked up a swirl of dust at my feet, and a sob tugged at my chest. “Pick ‘im up.”
“I … can’t do this.”
“Ever hear of cremation? Ain’t no different than that, son. Shit, if it makes ya feel better, we’ll gather up his pieces on the other end and stick ‘em in an urn for you to take back to his momma.”
Staring down at my friend, I felt the first twinge of madness crawl beneath my skin, like a snake through the dirt. “I’m going to kill you.”
Ignoring me, Fox kept on with his manipulation. “Don’t you want to go home? Back to your own damn room, with your own damn bed, in your own shitty ass neighborhood? All you gotta do is pick up Eli there and toss him in.”
It sickened me that he’d used Eli’s name. As if he had any right. As if any of them had any right to say his name.
I lurched toward Gideon, who took a step back, and felt the cold steel press hard into my temple.
“You are testing my patience. I’m giving you a chance here, son. He ain’t gonna feel nothing. Boy’s already dead.”
Yes. Eli was dead. They’d killed him, and no one would ever know, unless I survived. I was the only one who could ensure that my best friend received some small measure of justice for what he’d suffered. If I died, Eli’s horrific death would go unpunished.
A push against my temple scraped my skin, as Fox nudged me with the gun. “Pick him up and throw him in. ‘Sall you gotta do, and you’ll be free. Don’t you want to be—”
I fell to my knees, a sob breaking in my chest as I slid my hands beneath my best friend’s lifeless body, and dragged his head onto my lap. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered, resting my forehead against his, the tears falling from my cheek onto his sleeping eyes. “They’ll all pay for this. I swear it.”
“All right. You’ve mourned. Now, get on with it.”
I’d never grown up with prayer, but I swore to God right then that if I lived and was let go, I’d do everything in my power to make it right.
“Forgive me.” Together with Gideon, I lifted Eli’s body off the ground, and tossed him onto the blade.
As the machine sucked him in, I dropped to my knees a second time, the vomit at the back of my throat expelling in a burning torrent that hit the dirt and splashed back into my face. I dry-heaved bile and choked on the stringy slime that dangled out of my mouth.
Another round pumped out of me, until I was certain nothing remained inside my body. Not even my own soul.
As the machine chugged on, I slammed my palms to my ears and rocked back and forth, while more acids climbed my throat.
A hand gripped my shoulder, which I wrenched off of me, but the echo of my sob brought my attention toward where Fox stood beside me.
He held an object in his hand, it’s screen flipped out to the side. A camcorder. “How’s it feel to be an accomplice, my boy?”
“Motherfucker. Motherfucker!” I scrambled across the dirt toward him, and a powerful blow to my stomach shot up through my chest and exploded in my sinuses. Another blow sent me crashing to the dirt, where Trevi’s boot smashed against my cheekbone.
Sighing, Fox knelt down beside me and tipped his head, while the weight of Trevi’s fat fucking foot crushed my face. “I’m going to let you go. You get to go home and live a normal life, son. How’s that feel?”
A fine mist coated my eyes at the thought of going home. Not out of relief, though, because my life would never be normal again. It would stop the unknowns. The fear of the blackness. The question mark sitting at the end of my mind, leaving me to wonder if home was any better than death.
“I’m gonna let you in on a secret. Let you stew on this. That fancy dressed man from before? He wanted me to kill you. Both of you. He thought you might get a wild hair up your ass to go after him. Tell everyone what he did to Eli.” He popped the screen of the camcorder shut. “See, that’s how men in power work. They do what they want because they can. Us little guys? Well, we get fucked, don’t we? All boils down to money. Tryin’ to survive. We’re all just lyin’ in our coffins waitin’ for some motherfucker with more power, more money to come along and close the lid over us.” Another deep snort and he spat an arc of phlegm that landed a few feet away. “I don’t think I gotta kill you, son. I think you’ll keep your mouth shut, or every fucking cop in this c
ity will be at your door. You don’t want that. Your daddy sure as fuck don’t want that.” He pushed Trevi’s foot off my cheek and wiped the grit away. “So you promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut. Or I’ll send this tape to the boy’s momma. I don’t think you want her seeing that, do you?”
I shook my head. I’d been broken. For as long as I’d held tight to my wits, they’d finally broken me.
“Good. Now, there’s one thing I gotta do before I can let you go. I don’t think you’re gonna like it much.”
18
Ty
Present day …
Back when I was a kid, the concept of right and wrong had been simple. What was right typically resulted in happiness, and wrong ensured suffering.
Unfortunately, I’d suffered ten long years doing the right thing, working a normal job, desperately trying to ignore the screams and nightmares, before I realized how wrong it was for me to continue living in hell, while the men who’d destroyed my life walked free and clear.
The definitions had become convoluted with time, and the empathy I’d groomed by staying connected to humankind had begun to snap like fragile balloon strings. When my uncle finally passed, I no longer had the guidance to keep me on the right path.
A tired blue truck, with Gideon’s in faded white paint along the side of it, clanked to a rolling stop in front of the abandoned house, where I’d called it to. Behind the tailgate sat a large yellow contraption, the sight of which left a sick hollow in my stomach.
I waited inside the house, staring through the window, as the man in the cab hobbled out, gaze sweeping across the vast emptiness that surrounded us, save for the abandoned house. Empty lots on either side held the stumps of homes that’d been burned to the ground, or demolished. He scratched his head and lifted the paper in his hands to his face, as though checking the address.
I’d called him as a prospective client who’d recently purchased the property as a fixer upper, and offered to pay a large sum of money to remove the brush and trees accumulated on the lot. When he’d told me his helper had quit on him a couple weeks prior, I’d offered him double.
