“Don’t they hurt?” Maddox asked, standing at the entrance. The automatic door slid open and the status remained the same; no one left, no one entered.
“At first,” the girl replied, as if expecting the question, “but you get used to them pretty quickly.”
“You get asked that a lot, don’t you?”
“Not as much as you’d think. Most seem too afraid to ask.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they think they’ll hurt my feelings or something. Or maybe they’re just shy. I saw your face, though, and knew you wanted to ask. Didn’t think you would, to tell you the truth. You just got out, didn’t you?”
Maddox cocked his head, grocery bag swinging in his hand. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Ain’t a sweeter tooth around than a man freshly outta the joint.”
He smiled. “Well, you got me there.”
“I also bet candy and cupcakes ain’t the only things you got a sweet tooth for, huh?”
His smile faded away with thoughts of his Addy. “I think I better go.”
“You know which one hurt the most, out of all of them?” the girl asked.
Maddox stayed put, curious. “What?”
“My clit. Hurt like a bastard.”
He winced, regretting his failure to depart the gas station when he still had a chance.
“Know why I had it removed?”
“The pain, I’d imagine.”
“Nah, like the others, you get used to it.”
“Then why?” Maddox asked, although he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know. All he had wanted was a simple Twinkie.
“Made oral a bitch. My ex? It sliced his tongue to shit, bled all up in me. I don’t care too much about him anymore, though. Come to think about it, it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if it had cut his tongue off all the way—the asshole that he is.”
Maddox paused for a moment, trying to think of what to say to something like that. After a while he concluded the best course of action would be to flee. He turned around and jogged out to the minivan and stuffed a chocolate Hostess cupcake down his throat, hoping his own daughter wasn’t the same as whatever that thing back at the gas station was.
A cotton candy-haired demon from Hell, he thought, and shuddered.
Chapter Three
Family Reunion
He wasn’t surprised to find their old place empty. She had warned him in advance that they were moving far away from the Midwest.
However, Maddox sincerely doubted their new home would be located even two towns’ distance, and his suspicions were proven correct when he looked up his ex-wife’s maiden name in the phonebook. Shit, she had even moved out of town.
Sheryl Landers, it read, his finger halting on the listing. He tore the page out and folded it into his pocket. There was no use in trying to call. It would only end with her hanging up the phone. No, this sort of interaction needed to be face-to-face.
Driving over to the address listed in the book, Maddox popped in a butter rum Lifesaver and wondered how he had managed to go without candy for so many years. The craving had even been worse than the cocaine, ridiculous as it sounded. He was a patient man, he liked to tell himself, and looked down at the steering wheel of the car he’d just stolen.
Well, sometimes he was, at least.
He swung into the apartment complex his ex-wife now lived. Nearly passed it—a jungle of snow-covered bushes and trees hid the parking lot entrance from normal street view. The place was in need of a serious trimming. And shoveling. Jesus, he hoped he didn’t get stuck trying to pull out. In some places the snow was even past his ankles.
He passed the residential mailbox, noticing an infestation of graffiti along its dented steel, and read their inscriptions. On the side, in large block letters, graffiti read: JEREMY WAS HERE! LONG LIVE THE WHITE MAN!
Below that, another rogue suitor—this one wielding red ink—raised the question of said Jeremy’s arguable sexuality.
Maddox scanned past this to the tenant labels. He spotted the name in the middle, at 3C.
S. Landers.
There was no working buzzer within sight, so he allowed himself in the building and made his way up the stairs. He stopped at 3C and raised his fist to knock on the door, but slowly lowered it back down.
He was about to see his family for the first time in a decade. They had no idea of his release. Somehow he didn’t see this ending well. Would Addy even remember him? Surely she would. She was only seven when he was put away; not like she had been three or four, or something. There had to be some kind of memory the girl still kept of him.
He did, however, fear what Sheryl might have told Addy about her father. Was she aware of the type of man he used to be? Did she think he was dead? Hell, she could be thinking anything, really. There was no use in getting stressed out on the matter. The only way to go about this would be to peel off the Band-Aid and just knock.
So that’s what he did.
Maddox could hear the distant babbles of a television as the door swung open. It was loud, any hint of dialogue being drowned out by an obnoxious laugh track. His muscles tensed as a woman appeared before him, one with long black hair covering her left eye. She wore baggy pants and a tight black T-shirt with the words SICK PUPPIES printed across it, white sleeves from an undershirt covering her arms. She stood there barefoot in the doorway, granting visibility to the black nail polish that matched her facial cosmetics.
He knew who she was right away.
“Yeah?” The girl raised her eyebrow. “Can I help you?”
He realized he was just standing there with a goofy smile like some sort of creep. A great first impression with his daughter after so long. He cleared his throat. “Hello, sweetheart.”
She sighed. “You a friend of Del’s?”
“Who?” Maddox wasn’t sure he wanted to know who that was. “No. I’m here to see you.”
“Me?” She pointed to herself for clarification.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” What else had he expected?
“No…sorry?”
Maddox thought for a moment, trying to figure out a way to sharpen his daughter’s memory. Finally he said, “Here, try to picture me with a lot of hair, ‘bout this long? Ring any bells?”
The girl shook her head. “No, sorry, who are you?”
Maddox held his arms out, welcoming her fleeing embrace. “I’m Daddy, baby.”
“What?” Addison Kane took a step back.
“I’m home.” He smiled, following her inside.
The living room made him grimace. Nicotine stained ceiling, holes in the wall, dirty carpet. A small TV rested in the corner of the room on a brown cardboard box. The whole place had a significant odor of expired milk. The sofa across the way had more rips and tears than some smartass new fish getting taught a lesson in the showers.
He looked back at his daughter. This was definitely no place to raise a little girl in. Not that she was very “little” anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Addison kept backing up, face fixed in a confused stare. Maddox attempted to say something else, but was interrupted by a woman’s voice coming from the kitchen. “Who’s at the door? Jeremy?”
Addison shook her head slowly. “Some guy.” She never took her eyes off Maddox. “Says he’s my dad.”
There was a brief silence, then a sharp “What?” from the kitchen. Heavy footsteps headed toward the living room. They were confronted by a woman in a flannel, revealing her bare legs. Same remarkable hair as their daughter. It didn’t take Maddox long to notice the large stomach on his ex-wife. Not the usual fat girl stomach, either. More along the lines of a girl with child. They stood there staring at each other; Sheryl’s expression that of puzzlement and Maddox’s of pity. She was so unhealthy-looking, skin incredibly jaundiced, dark bags hanging from droopy eyes. It appeared that while Maddox had given up his drug addiction, his formal spouse had acquired her own. The tracks imprinted wi
thin her inner thighs didn’t lie.
Poor Addy, he thought.
The room remained quiet for a moment longer, like the short span that occurred before a gunslinger duel commenced in a cheap spaghetti western. Just staring each other down. Then Maddox winked and showed off that grin of his.
“Don’t tell me you forgot about me, too,” he said.
“Addison, go to your room,” Sheryl said.
“But Mom—”
“Now!”
Addison sighed, gave one last good inspection of Maddox, and walked to the hallway and entered the second door on the right. Maddox repeated it over in his head; made sure he wouldn’t forget which one was his daughter’s room. It seemed like information that would end up coming in handy later on.
He redirected his vision back at his ex-wife. “Now, that isn’t any way to speak to our daughter.”
“She’s not your daughter,” Sheryl said coldly, lips snarling. “Not anymore.”
“Now, that simply isn’t true.”
“Oh, it is. Now I’m going to call the police. I would advise you to get the hell out of here before they arrive.” She stormed back into the kitchen, torso and above visible by the opening in the wall.
“Why would you call them?” Maddox asked.
“Sure, you bust out and you think you can hide out here? You fuckin’ loser, you best think again. I’m not putting up with your crap, anymore.”
“Honey,” he said, “do the math. I didn’t escape from anywhere. I got paroled. I’m free, baby. Free.”
Sheryl rolled her eyes up as if in deep thought. After a while she placed the phone back in its cradle, pulled out a knife from the drawer, and headed back in the living room, blade pointing out. She halted a few feet short of Maddox, who hadn’t budged an inch.
“I don’t care if you did or didn’t bust out,” she said. “I still want you out of here right this instant. I never want to see your pathetic face ever again, you got it? And you can forget about Addison. You lost her, understand? This isn’t your family, anymore.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so mean about it.” Maddox held out his arms. “I come in peace.”
His ex responded by waving the knife in front of his face, barely a foot away from carving a new set of eyes in his flesh. “Maddox, dammit, I told you to go so you best go!”
As if signaling the welcome bells, an annoyed voice from down the hall suddenly shouted, “What the fuck is all this goddamn noise?”
“Uh-oh,” Sheryl whispered, amused, “you gone and done it now.”
He heard footsteps stomping toward them, and there appeared a man in just his boxers, sporting a mullet while scratching his balls. “The fuck are you?” he asked, looking at Maddox suspiciously.
At first, Maddox remained silent. Then he said, “I’m Dad, that’s who the fuck I am.”
“What you say, boy?”
Sheryl leaped in front of the two men, putting her hand on the guy’s bare hairy chest. “Del, remember I told you about Addy’s dad? The guy locked up? This is him. I guess he got paroled. Now he’s here and keeps threatening me and he just won’t go away!”
He would never admit it aloud, but that had hurt Maddox quite some bit on the inside. There was a time he believed she had actually loved him.
“Oh yeah?” said Del, his ex’s new lowlife boyfriend. Although judging from the wedding rings on both their fingers, he was a lot more than just a boyfriend.
The guy looked Maddox up and down, smirking the entire time. “You’re the junkie, huh? That right?”
Maddox stayed quiet. If there was one thing he had learned locked up it was that it was usually better to let the other person speak. The more you spoke, the fuller of shit you usually were. The advantage of silence, you had all the time in the world to plan out your next move. All of this while the opponent flapped his gums off about things that would never matter once the actual action started.
“Don’t know what you’re doing around here, boy,” Del went on. “Ain’t got no smack for ya.”
They stood there, a few feet apart, Del trying to stare Maddox down, Maddox just standing there and keeping his cool. “You sure about that?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ sure, man. What, you wanna start something? Huh?”
“I was just thinking those needle marks on your arm tell a different story.”
Del glanced down at his arm and back up. “You mind your own fuckin’ business, ya hear? Now get the hell outta here ‘fore I knock your fucking skull in.”
“After I speak to my daughter.”
“She ain’t your daughter anymore, bitch,” Del sniggered. “She’s my kid now, but don’t you worry—I takes real good care of her.”
Then he winked.
Maddox didn’t think—it only took one right hook to the guy’s jaw to knock him out cold. He went up in the air and landed squarely on his back, sending a vibrating thud throughout the living room. Sheryl screamed, dropping the knife, and put her hands to her mouth.
Maddox cracked his knuckles and turned his head to his ex-wife with utter disgust. “What do you see in this guy?”
Sheryl backed away, shivering. “I’m calling the police.”
“I figured.”
* * * * *
Maddox wiped down the minivan clean of all prints before abandoning it on the side of the road. All his sweets were gone, wrappers crammed into a plastic bag that he buried in the snow ten feet from the scene. He crafted a little cardboard sign and left it sticking in the driver side window:
GONE TO GET GAS
He thought it might buy him a little extra time before someone discovered the vehicle was stolen. He wasn’t sure how effective it’d be; just something he came up with on the spot.
Sucking on his last Lifesaver, Maddox started down the snowy road leading toward the trailer park. The trailer park where his brother lived. Well, at least used to.
He didn’t bother sticking his thumb out. Hitchhiking seemed like a bad idea. It’d just lead to having to deal with some nosy asshole begging for one across the face. He was pissed and he knew a nice long walk would help cool him down a little. It always did.
It had felt pretty good sticking one to that dipshit back at Sheryl’s apartment. He’d met hundreds of his type before, in and out of the joint. All they ever did was make him mad, and he ended up hitting them. It was the cycle of life.
As he walked, Maddox wondered once again what Sheryl was doing with somebody like that. Did she have a thing for drug addicts? True, Maddox used to dip into the cocaine once in a while. Nothing too serious, just a little taste of King’s own product, free of charge. Of course, his old boss had never been aware of this, and that was probably for the best.
Once he got sent up to Megaton, his regular dosage had been cut off entirely. Sure, there were ways to smuggle certain substances in, but then you would owe someone a favor. And in prison, once you owed one person a favor, you were never out of debt until you were witnessing a body bag zip closed from an interior point-of-view.
But, what had seemed the impossible turned out to be the reality as Maddox no longer found himself relying on his next hit. He knew then this was the beginning of a transformation into a better human being, a more suitable father figure for his little Addy.
Climbing the slick porch, Maddox gave three rapid pounds to the screen door, waited a second, and then added three more for good measure. He doubted his younger brother had actually moved.
He stood there waiting for someone to answer, glancing idly around the trailer park. He appeared to be the only one moving about. It was around mid-afternoon, meaning everyone was either at school or work. Or sleeping, of course. The snow had long stopped falling, thank God, and now the air was still, the world taking a moment of silence.
The walk, like he knew it would, had helped calm him down some. He was less stressed out now, telling himself he was a free man and could do whatever he pleased. There were no more bars to keep him confined from all the e
ndless possibilities awaiting his future.
The front door swung open and a shirtless man in jeans peered through the doorway with greasy hair. “Yeah, help you with somethin’?”
“I was thinking maybe you could,” Maddox said.
“And what would that…” He paused, adjusting his vision, and dropped his jaw. “Holy shit! Is that you, Mads?”
“The one and only.” Maddox nodded.
“Hell, man, I haven’t seen you in like…what, five years?”
“Ten.”
“Yeah. Shit, too long. You just get out?”
“Today.”
“And you come straight here, huh?” Benny Kane asked, grinning. “You miss your brother, that it?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Maddox said. “Hey, you gonna invite me or what? It’s freezing out here.”
“Yeah, of course. My place is your place, you know that.”
Maddox did indeed know this. This was why he had given his parole officer the trailer’s address as his new home on the outside. His brother had a way of never being able to say no to him.
Benny stepped aside to allow Maddox to enter. As he closed the door behind them, he gave Maddox an odd look and said, “Dude, what’d you do to your hair?”
Chapter Four
All The Foie Gras You Can Stuff in That Toxic Dump You Call a Mouth
Johnny sat at the lunch table, staring down at his tray of food in disgust.
The cafeteria was animated by the shrill laughter of his so-called peers, chattering away like jackrabbits on crack.
Of course he didn’t want to eavesdrop, but he was left with little choice. They all talked so loud, they were practically begging him to. Why else does someone even talk if not for others to hear them? Everyone sounded like the same dying starstruck hyena.
He looked down at the piece of toast in his hand, shaking just inches from his open mouth. The little round purplish balls spread across it sickened him. He took a bite. He’d eaten this shit before but still he grimaced as each egg popped, releasing its horrid salty flavors into his taste buds. It was hard to believe that this was the most expensive food in the world, costing up to five grand a kilogram. Sure, they served other types of caviar at lunch, but since he was considered one of the “richer” students, he was rewarded the ever-luxurious Beluga.
Toxicity Page 4
