by Greg Barth
During those weeks I stayed in dozens of jails. I racked up thousands of miles on the road.
One late afternoon on a bus full of prisoners, it happened. It had been building for weeks. My wrists were screaming with pain, my feet were numb.
I sat on the crowded bus looking out the window as the miles flew by. I sensed something going on beside me. I turned my head. A man sat in the seat across from me. A fellow inmate. He was speaking to me. I watched his lips move. By the look in his eyes, I knew he was saying foul things to me. But I couldn’t hear his words. Some weird pressure building in my head blocked out the sound.
It started with tears. They streamed down my cheeks while I looked at the man saying cruel things about me. They dripped onto my shirt. I hoped I could have a good cry and that would be the end of it. But the tears wouldn’t stop. My nose ran, the clear snot streaming over my lips and chin. I couldn’t wipe it away.
My body began to tremble.
The tears turned to sobs. My breath caught convulsively. It continued to build.
The sobs turned to cries. People began to look my way. I felt a fresh surge of emotion welling up. I just couldn’t hold it back any longer. Too much inside that had finally found a way out. I cried until I hyperventilated. I couldn’t make it stop.
“I can’t stand it,” I said, my voice a thin, high-pitched whine. I gasped for breath. “I can’t fucking stand it. I can’t fucking stand it.”
“Oh man, here we go,” a guy sitting in front of me said. “We got a bitch on the rag.”
I raised my voice. “OH GOD I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT! I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT! I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT!” My voice sounded husky and hoarse and crazy and nothing at all like me. I twisted at the stiff handcuffs. I pulled against the waist-chain. The steel didn’t give. All I was doing was damaging my flesh further. But I had to get free.
I heard the driver say to another Marshal, “Go shut that bitch up.”
I screamed hysterically at the top of my lungs. I felt my face redden with fury. Everyone on the bus stared at me.
One of the men said, “Shut up bitch. Shut up bitch.”
The rest of the bus—thirty or forty men—joined in the chorus. The whole throng of men was chanting, “Shut up bitch, shut up bitch, shut up bitch…”
I couldn’t draw breath.
The Marshal made his way down the aisle to me. He stopped next to my seat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I writhed and squirmed and fought against my restraints. It only hurt me worse. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. My voice was filled with panic. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. Please. Please. Please. Make it stop, please. Make it stop.” I broke down in sobs again. Fresh tears streamed down my checks.
“Shut up, Carson,” he said. “You started it.”
“Please, please, please, please...”
“Shut the fuck up, Carson.”
“PLEASE!”
I fought my restraints.
“Carson. Shut. Up. Now.”
“No. No, no, no, no. You’ve gotta help me. Please. Please. Please! PLEASE! You’ve gotta help meeeeeee!”
He struck me with an openhanded slap across my cheek.
A chorus of men’s voices shouted approval. “Gag that bitch,” somebody said.
I looked at the Marshal dead in the eye, glared at him with every ounce of hatred my small, starved, frail body could muster. I couldn’t hurt him. My face reddened and I screamed at him with all my might.
He removed a can of spray from his belt. He put it directly up against my face, about an inch away from my eyes. He sprayed me with the pepper spray.
I screamed louder. My voice was going, but the volume was fueled by rage and emotion. I would blow my vocal cords out and still scream at him.
“Shut the fuck up, Carson. Or I will tase you. Do you understand me? I will hit you with my stun gun.”
I screamed at him until I felt something pop in my throat. “I fucking hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate ALL OF YOU,” I shouted in a coarse, raspy voice. “I killed them all. Do you hear me? I fucking killed them all. Even the ones that I didn’t kill, I fucking killed them! And I goddamn swear to you I will FUCKING KILL YOU TOO! I will fucking KILL YOU ALL! You hear me? I will FUCKING KILL YOU!”
He zapped me with his stun gun. My body jerked and shuddered. I flopped like a fish in my restraints. As soon as I recovered enough, I opened my mouth and forced out another faint scream. He shocked me again. He kept shocking me until I shit myself.
“Take that, killer,” one of the inmates shouted.
He pulled his night stick from his belt. “You want me to jam this up your ass, Carson? Cause I will. You understand me?” His voice echoed and sounded like he was a hundred miles away.
I lay on the seat making small, mewling sounds.
“You shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up now,” he said. “You wanna spit some teeth? Keep it up, trash.”
I gave a faint, defiant, “ahhhhh…”
He hit me with the stick.
I roared at him in rage, but all that came out was a gasp.
He hit me over and over again with his stick until my voice failed completely. When I could no longer make a sound, he thought I had shut up.
My body was still filled with rage.
T WENTY-ONE
Selena
THEY CARRIED ME off of the bus that night. I had soiled myself and vomited all over the front of my shirt. My eyes were matted shut from the pepper spray, and I was just plain unwilling to move.
They put me through the motions of processing me into the jail. Fingerprints. Photograph. Flashlight shined up the ass. Squat and cough. De-loused. They gave me a shower and clean jumpsuit. Orange this time. Blanket. Bagged lunch. Hard floor.
Fuck them.
I went into the cell and sat on the floor. I didn’t even bother to spread the blanket out. I lay on my side, my cheek pressed against the cold concrete and stared at the roach droppings in front of my face. I curled up in a fetal position.
“Selena?” I knew the voice.
“Gabby?”
“Is that really you? You look so... thin. So... different.”
“Yes, Gabby.”
“Help me,” I heard her say to someone else.
Gentle hands lifted me from the floor, took me to a bed, covered me with a blanket. I felt something soft under my head. An arm. Gabby’s arm. I felt fingers brush my hair out of my eyes.
I glanced up at her. For someone so ill-equipped for jail life, she didn’t look the worse for wear. Her stringy brown hair was clean, her face had a healthy glow, but she looked concerned.
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You’re so much thinner than before. Are you sick?”
My hands trembled. I curled up on my side next to her as tight as I could. “What?” I said.
“Are you alright?”
I started to sob.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Gabby said. She put a cigarette between my lips and lit it. The nicotine helped calm me some.
“I... I… can’t take it anymore,” I said.
“What happened, Selena?”
I shook in the bed. “I just can’t stand it anymore, Gabby. What they’re doing to me.”
“What did they do?”
I shook my head. I dropped my cigarette. I fumbled for it, found it, put it between my lips and took a deep draw.
I started babbling rapid fire around the cigarette. “I’ll never see my uncle again. I can’t make him stop hurting people. They win. They win. I’m done. I can’t stop them. They’ve killed us both, you and me.”
“Selena?”
“Yes, Gabby.” I blew out my smoke.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I want you to call somebody. Call them collect. They’ll accept the charges.”
“Who?”
“I want you to memorize this number.” We repeated t
he number over and over and over until she finally got it right. Once she had it down, it was locked in her flawed but sweet mind forever.
“What do you want me to tell them?”
“Tell them to kill me.”
“What? No. I can’t do that.”
“You can. You tell them to kill me. Tell them they have two days and that’s it. Tell them that if they don’t kill me, I’m going to start talking. I’m going to tell that Federal Prosecutor Harding everything. And I mean everything. Anything I don’t know, I’ll fucking make up. I’ll make up more shit than they can imagine. And I’m only giving them two days to kill me. Two days? Got it? Then I spill the goods on the whole fucking operation.”
“Selena?”
“Yes, Gabby.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Even if I did say that, it’s on a recorded line and all. The guards, they’d get word out. It couldn’t be done.”
“Figure it out, Gabby. Figure it out. You don’t have to use my name. You have to think. You have to get them to understand. Just fucking figure it out! Are you too stupid?”
“Selena?”
“Yes, Gabby.”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. You’re my friend now.”
“Me neither. That’s why I want you to do this. I want the bad thing to stop. If you don’t do this for me, then you’re not my friend anymore. Got it?”
“Selena?”
“YES! GABBY! What! What? WHAT?”
“Um... I’m so sorry. Nothing.”
She put her arm around me as I cried. She patted my shoulder. I’d found a true, innocent friend in the unlikeliest of places.
I’d like to say that I cried myself to sleep that night, but I didn’t sleep.
T WENTY-TWO
Ragus
RAGUS BREED TAPPED his cigarette in the ashtray that sat on his bare chest. He looked up at the ceiling fan. He liked the feel of the cool air on his body. He was completely nude except for a sheet covering his midsection.
He was in Val’s apartment. Val was a slob, but the place didn’t smell or anything.
Val lay on her side next to him, asleep. Ragus enjoyed watching her sleep. He liked her large, bare breasts. He liked the tattoos that ran up her side. He liked her punk style hair and her nose ring.
Val worked for Pete Malucci at the pawn shop, and Ragus had known her for years. They had an on-again off-again thing going, but they had been seeing more of each other since Ragus had taken the shotgun blast to the face on the mountain.
Life was good for Ragus. He had retired early, selling his convenience stores and car washes. He had enough work from Malucci to keep him busy. The best part was, the girl who shot him in the face also killed Joe Faranacci. With Crazy Joey out of the way, Malucci took the reins of the syndicate, and sanity ruled.
Things were so calm, sometimes Ragus grew bored.
As he smoked, he thought of the girl who shot him—Selena. He shot her on the mountain, put two in her chest and one to the head. He saw the blood. He saw her cold, dead eyes. He’d spit on her face.
But she lived, somehow pulled through or got resuscitated. She healed up and came back strong to kill Faranacci.
Ragus drew on the cigarette. He remembered Selena naked, strapped to the wooden chair in the room with sheet plastic lining the walls and the drain on the floor.
He pictured her covered in blood after she tore the side of Frankie White’s neck off with her teeth.
He wondered if she was a vampire. That would explain why she couldn’t be killed. He’d seen her neck moving as she swallowed Frankie’s blood while gripping him with her teeth.
Ragus pictured her small breasts covered in blood. He remembered the shape of her ass as he led her into the room and fastened her to the chair.
Ragus closed his eyes. He felt a stirring under the sheet. He turned to Val and brushed her hair away from her cheek.
He thought of Selena, and he was ready to go again.
Val opened her eyes and looked at him.
Ragus leaned toward her. “Rise and shine,” he said.
Val’s phone rang. “Jeez,” she said and rubbed her eyes. She picked up the phone from the nightstand and stared at the display. “Hang on,” she said to Ragus.
She tapped the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. “Yes.” Her eyes widened. “I understand. I’ll accept the charges,” she said. And then, “Selena? What… Wait, who is this? Honey, slow down. Slow down.”
T WENTY-THREE
Selena
THE DAY STARTED at three a.m. as usual. This time I was the only one in the bullpen. I wasn’t herded onto a bus, instead was put into the back of a small van. The transport crew was only one man. This was a first for me. I guess even Federal Marshals can be understaffed some days.
I hoped this would be an easier day if nothing else. My throat hurt from the screaming I’d done the evening before.
I felt strangely calm. I took comfort in the fact that this would all be over, one way or another, in the next couple of days. I’d be dead, or I’d start talking. There was no third option. I wouldn’t continue like this.
Once we were off the grounds of the correctional facility, the van pulled into a drive thru at a fast food restaurant. After ordering, the driver pulled the van into the parking lot and parked. Not that strange, but it piqued my interest.
The back door opened a minute later. The driver got in back with me. He was carrying a bag and a coffee cup. He took me in from head to toe. With my ratty hair hanging over my pale face, I had to look like shit, but he didn’t seem to notice. The way his eyes lingered, I assumed he had to be some kind of freak.
“Hey,” he said. “Today’s going to be a little different. I hear you had a rough day yesterday. It’s not often that I go out on transport solo, so I’m going to try to make it a little easier on you. For one day anyhow. We can make this a special day.”
My mind spun with thoughts about what this could mean. Maybe there was a third option after all.
I just sat there looking at him. “Yesterday sucked,” I said. My voice hadn’t yet recovered. The best I could manage was a raspy croak. “The days before weren’t much better.”
“Here, let’s fix this.” He took out a key ring from his pocket and removed the tightening box from my handcuffs.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I brought you this.” He held up a cup of coffee and a bag. “I hope you like coffee with cream, sugar, and breakfast biscuits.”
My stomach growled. “No thanks. I can’t reach my mouth, and I don’t want to sit here having to pee all day. If I drink that big cup of coffee, I’ll be about to burst in an hour.”
“Here,” he said. He removed my waist-chain and I was able to move my arms up and down. “My name’s Johnny. I’ll stop so that you can go to the bathroom in forty-five minutes and then an hour after that. How’s that?”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “Thank you, Johnny. You’re an angel.”
“If you’ve done it to the least of these,” he said. “Do you know who said that?”
I shook my head. “You said it, I guess,” I said.
He smiled. “No, honey. It wasn’t me. But here’s what I’m thinking. It’s just me and you today. So we can do things a bit differently than we usually do. I can be nicer to you, and then you can be nice to me too. What do you say?”
I knew this was a game. Instinct kicked in. How do you treat a fly who thinks he’s a spider? You keep letting him act like the spider until he’s so enmeshed in your web he can’t get free. By the time he figures out he’s not a predator after all, it’s all over.
I gave him my best smile. “You want to fuck me. Don’t you, Johnny?” I said in my coarse whisper.
“Damn, you just cut right to the chase, don’t you?”
“I look horrible, though.”
“You look all right to me. Besides, we do this right, I’ll only be seeing the top of your head. Maybe that tiny l
ittle ass you’ve got.”
“I could use a drink, Johnny. You have no idea how much I could really use a drink. I’ve suffered so much. And I’m sure there are things you need too. I could give you those things.”
“Eat your breakfast. Don’t worry about the bathroom. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, Johnny.”
He left the back of the van and climbed back into the cab. I sipped my coffee. Wow, it was good. After a couple of sips I began to feel better.
I hoped I hadn’t played my trump card too early and pushed Johnny too hard too fast. I had no idea what kind of freak he was and how to push his buttons yet, but I wasn’t sure I’d get another opportunity to plant the seed in his head.
I ate my breakfast. It was nauseating—greasy meat and biscuit full of lard, but I fought to keep it down. I wanted to regain as much strength as I could. The emotion spent the previous day, the shock from the Taser, and being hit with the stick, those things had all taken their toll on me.
I flexed my fingers, made a tight fist then extended them straight and wide apart, over and over to keep the circulation strong.
Johnny was a man of his word. It felt like 45 minutes when he pulled off the highway. He parked by a gas station and let me go into the ladies room unattended. I took a few minutes to wash my face and untangle my hair. The water brought some color back to my face. I wanted to look as good as possible. I wanted to get Johnny alone. I still wasn’t sure what he was into, but looking a bit less gross couldn’t hurt.
He was waiting for me when I got out.
“I’ll get you settled back in the van. Anything I can get you from inside?”
“Um...” I had to think. “A Coke and a pack of Winstons?”
“I can do that,” he said.
“A pack of condoms. For later. If you’re still interested.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and closed the van door.
A few minutes later he came back from the store and brought me an ice cold Coke and my cigarettes with a book of matches.
