10.30.2013

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 11

              DEATH CYCLES

 

           A deep muffled rumble began to grow out of the ghost fog like a death moan from a corpse. Alerting me like the bell over the diner door, the echoing growl announced the arrival of something. This time it wasn’t hungry patrons looking for a bite to eat. This time it was death; death on wheels, looking for me.

            A distress signal danced down my spine from my brain to my legs, demanding me to pick up my feet and run. In my attempt to pick’em up and lay’em down, a bad connection made itself know. Something blocked the circuits somewhere around my waist, disabling the command from above, the input did not compute. Each step I took seemed to be on a delay, my brain now ten steps ahead of my body. Stiff from all the walking and the cold that found its way into my aching joints; my legs creaked and popped as I barely mustered a hurried shuffle,  like that of a tin soldier or an old man who’s got to take a shit.   

            The snarl of exhaust pipes, now much closer, sang out in discord like a pack of howling wolves circling their prey. The wolves (the boys from the diner), were on the hunt and about to strike. If I didn’t get off the black top, I would soon be road kill. I made my best attempt to hobble to the shoulder of the road, right as four bright head-lanterns screamed past me.  The biker foursome road in like apocalyptic horsemen, kicking up life into dead autumn leaves that danced after the motorcycles like resurrected armies of the dead.

            I dove to the earth face first into a puddle and soaked in it as I waited to see if they had noticed me; if they would just keep going. I couldn’t pinpoint them through the fog, but with the squeal of tires followed by the killing of their motors, my stomach turned…They noticed me alright. The forest went silent once again. I didn’t dare move. I handled the four punk’s just fine back at the diner, but I had strength from a belly full of eggs and the element of surprise on my side. Now, I was playing under their terms, and my ability to beat all four in the open seemed unlikely.

            The click of their boots on the road sounded like devils hooves, followed by the same hyena like laughter they let out at the waitress.

 

“What do you know daddy-o; Mr. Policeman let us go!” one punk said.

 

More hyena clatter filled the air.

 

“Yeah pops! Now come out and we’ll make this quick.” another added.

 

           Their black silhouettes pulled back at the peaceful veil of soft white fog, and I didn’t dare rise to expose mine. As still as a sloth, without taking my eyes off them, I reached around on the ground for a big stick or rock. BINGO! My fingers wrapped a solid branch, pressing it firm into my palm. I tried to pull the would be club closer to me, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. At first, I thought maybe it was an exposed root of a tree, or perhaps stuck under a big boulder. I soon found the stick to be something else entirely.

With a quiet roll closer to it, trying not to rustle up a twig snap or crunch leaves in the foliage beneath me, I hoped that maybe with better leverage I could release the stick for battle. I went from my belly, to my back, to my belly again.  Now lying with my chest on top of it, I found pinned in the wood with a rusted nail, a piece of wet paper stained in a message that I had seen before.

 

FINISH THE JOB

 

         The object that I had been clawing at was the bat from the folding room. The one with the nail and the note that the Nazis left for me to kill that… I didn’t care how it got there, I should have known better but in my desperation, my panic, it seemed like a god send. I tried to pry it from the patch of dirt where it seemed to be cemented, when I saw the earth around it move. Just then, a small sink hole opened around the bat. Loose soil gave way, as the faded black corpse of the man who I had killed in the folding room rose up out of the muck and clinched the back of my neck in one hand. He brought his rotting lips to my ear.

 

“Not this time cracker, you get no help this time. This here my bat now.”

 

         I shoved him hard into the dirt, rising to my feet in a stumble that carried enough momentum to trip me up and send me right back down to the ground. Free from the corpse, but now lying on my back in the middle of the road, the fear of it all momentarily blinded me from worrying about the punks who were at my heels.

 

 I cried out to the corpse, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”

“It’s too late for that daddy-o!”

 

I opened my eyes to see the bikers staring down at me, circled like vultures; hungry vultures. Before I could say anything else, their boots made as if they were putting out a thousand cigarettes across my body. They literally stomped the shit out of me. Then, the one I put a fork in called them off and started in on what I knew would be the last words I would ever hear. I recognized them; they were my own words, words that I spoke once long ago. Devils words that rolled of what might as well have been my forked tongue, just before I ripped the throat of a poor soul to shredded wheat. 

 

“What we have here boys is the enemy. A piece of German shit if you ask me. And what do we do to the enemy boys?” the devil mouth said.

His grease monkeys replied with a drone chant, “KILL, KILL, KILL!”

 

They all chanted together, over and over, as the leader straddled my chest and pulled a switch blade from his boot.

 

“KILL, KILL, KILL!”

            “Time to fucking die NAZI!” he said.

 

            He was wearing black Wayfarers, just like my black bent up ones. My reflection was clear to make out in them, and in it, I discovered the face of the man I killed over thirty years ago. He looked shocked, scared, and helpless with a giant black swastika tattooed across his Adam’s apple.  Past my reflection in the glasses, a doppelganger of my youth in the face of my attacker. It wasn’t that it took all this time for me to realize he was me, and I was him. It wasn’t that I didn’t recognize myself; it’s just that, up until that point, I couldn’t process it all.

            I put my hands out. I tried to tell him. I cried out like the German I shot down in the latrine.

 

“NO, NO, NO…”

 

With each NO I let out, a gush of blood followed from my throat, until the NOs stopped coming, leaving only blood to escape my body.  I understood the helplessness the German must have felt, executed in a fury of ignorant hate, sentenced to death over something he wasn’t guilty of.

As the life bled out, I came in and out between blunt blows of the full body weight of my younger self, jumping up and down on my chest. His face, my face, was no longer distinguishable. It had grown into a dark mass of hate. His hate. My hate. One of the blows came down so hard that it forced all the air from my lungs and jolted my head back. As he, the hate, continued to pound at me, the surrounding ghost fog grew thick and clumped into forms, materializing into a mass of men in white pointed hoods, just like the men in the folding room. Among them was the hoodless, blonde haired German.

In my last moment of consciousness the German signaled to the men to take off their hoods.  They did, exposing more doppelgängers with my face, all identical to me. They were all in different ages from my life, all bearing the hate that I carried throughout my life, all present for the execution, our execution. In that moment, I had more hate than ever before, pure hate, hate for them all, hate for myself. Hate that could put out the sun. I realized then that all along, the hate, my hatred, had always been for myself. I would forever be trapped in my prison of hate, with no chance of escape or release. Damned to this cycled sentence for life and death...repeat, repeat, repeat.

 

My blood vision went black as the darkness superseded my life. 

 

****

 

I stabbed a man to death when I was 28 years old…

10.24.2013

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 10



COFFEE, WOMEN, AND TROUBLE

A bell over the diner door rang, tripped with the top part of the door smacking into it upon my entering. Right away I could see, though the place looked different on the outside, the interior hadn’t aged a day.  Padded red flaked bar stools lined the bar like pawns of a chess set over the black and white checkered floor. An old record juke box flashed orange and green lights at the far end of the diner next to a cigarette dispenser. The light yellow walls were decorated with pictures of what I assumed to be previous owners and cooks from maybe the 1930’s, and the typical Coke-a-Cola logo was branded all throughout the place. By the looks of it, I was the first patron of the morning.  
Through an opening in the wall behind the bar, connecting the kitchen to the dining room, a female hollered out,

“Have yourself a seat and I’ll be right with ya.”

I sat at the bar where I found a couple menus sticking up, sandwiched in-between a large glass set of salt and pepper shakers. I laid one out flat, but before I could look it over, an empty coffee cup was slapped down in front of me.
           
            “You look like a man who could use a cup of hot coffee.”

My eyes followed a white coffee stained apron up to the ripe face of a pretty brunette. She had few enough wrinkles that one would have a hard time distinguishing if she were older, but looked young for her age, or if she were younger, but looked older. It was hard to tell, but my guess was the later. She gave me a crooked smile and before I could reply, she poured the hot black goodness into the cup.  

            “What else can I get’cha cowboy?”

Without looking at the menu I ordered what I knew they were sure to have. 

“Two scrambled eggs and a side of wheat toast.”
“Alrighty hun, I’ll get that out to ya in a jiffy.”

She turned to the opening in the wall that lead into the kitchen and sounded off like a drill sergeant,

“I need two mixed chicks and a side of grain!’
           
Aside from Black Beauty and the picture of Olivia, it had been a while since I had seen a woman.  The smell of her perfume was almost as strong as the coffee cooking in the pot, just as intoxicating, settling like sticky sweet pollen from a rose onto the hairs of my nostrils. With every whiff, my nose hunted down the sent like an English Pointer, forcing my eyes into a locked on ogle in her direction. I couldn’t help but look. Nothing gives life to a man’s field of view like that of a beautiful woman, especially when you’ve gone as long as I did without seeing one. She caught me a few times, but didn’t so much as blush at my admirations. Clearly, she was use to attention, or maybe she just didn’t want it from me.
In my younger years, I was no Rudolph Valentino, but my rough features were attractive enough to win a few dames over here and there. Olivia always reassured me that, GIRLS SEE DIFFERENT KINDS OF HANDSOME, AND YOU JUST HAPPEN TO BE MY KIND. She meant it as a compliment, but I heard it as, YOU DON’T HAVE A FACE FOR THE MOVIES, BUT HEY, AT LEAST YOU HAVE A FACE.  I hadn’t had a good long look at myself in ages, but I was sure all the new scares and gray hairs that I collected in prison, buried any fragments of handsome I might have once had.  Rusty at the game, and without a good hand to play, I decided to flirt with my coffee instead of the waitress. I took a sip. It was bitter, burnt, rainbow oil on black, and perfect.  

“Where ya coming from cowboy?”
“Oh, nowhere, I’m just passing through.”
“Don’t mean to pry, I saw you get off the bus is all.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that I wasn’t on the bus. I was afraid that would lead to me having to explain where I really just came from. I’d rather her assume I was a tramp over a released convict. My attention drifted from her when I heard what sounded like rolling thunder, but soon recognized it to be the distinct rumble of a few V-Twins pulling up out front. She didn’t seem to notice.

“You been traveling a long time?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well if you’re looking to rest up, there’s a nice little motel just down the street from here that’s pretty cheap, but cozy.”
“I just might…”

DING-DING; the doorbell and a blast of crisp autumn wind announced more patrons to the diner. Most people’s natural reaction is to look at the commotion made by whatever is coming through a doorway, which the waitress did, but I saw no reason to take my eyes off of her. Not just because she was fun to look at, but because I adapted a different way of seeing when I was in the pen. There, to get caught starring directly at a guard or another inmate could be taken as a sign of hostility. Wandering peepers in the slammer usually meant only one of two things, you’re asking for trouble, or looking for it.  So I learned to see what was going on around me by watching others when they weren’t watching me. I’d pay attention to their reactions as they looked at whatever might be going on behind me. I could tune into their eyes and see what they see. Their eyes became the ones in the back of my head, without them ever knowing it. I also learned how to make my ears see. Sounds can show the brain its surrounding environment just as well as sight, sometimes even better.   
Before the waitress could even greet them, I knew by the sound of boots on the checkered floor, and the time it took for the bell to ring again on the back swing of the door, that at least three or four men had entered the diner, bikers no doubt. In the subtle dilation of the waitress’s eyes, and the slight perking of her lips in an almost undetectable frown, I could tell that she knew these men, and she wasn’t happen to see them. The strong smell of burning tobacco that masked the aroma of fresh coffee and killed the sweetness in the waitress’s perfume, told my nose that they were smoking. And in the honey pitch of their laughter I could see youth.

“Have a seat boys, and I’ll be right with ya.”

She brought her attention back to me.

“Quick topper off-er?”

I nodded. She made quick to fill my cup with one hand while fishing out a note pad with the other. With a swiftness that would impress a college running back, she hustled off to the men who were now sitting in a booth by the entrance. It didn’t take me long to hear why she wasn’t enthused to see her new customers. After asking to take their order, she was hit with a barrage of YOU CAN TAKE MY ORDER ANYTIME HONEY! and ARE YOU ON THE MENUE? type bullshit that guys sling when in groups. Just by that shit alone I could tell these punks were late teens, or mid twenty somethings. I knew because I had been guilty of jocking the same cocky trash when I was a kid.
They sounded like trouble, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She eventually got their orders out of them and returned to bark them off from her notepad to the cook in the kitchen. This time, he barked back,

“Order up!”

She grabbed the plate of steaming scrambled eggs, and like a hot potato, with a quick pivot, let it out of her hand before me.

“Careful, plate’s hot. Salt ‘n peppers to your right, and ketchups to your left. Need anything else?”
“No, this is fine, thank you.”

She walked back into the kitchen. I took a bite of the eggs. They tasted amazing, real, not like that powdered shit they fed us in the mess hall. I held that first bite in my mouth for as long as I could. The sensation almost took me away to an unearthly place, but I was soon pulled back to my seat in the diner with the clank and thud of boots to metal as one of the young punks kicked and cursed the juke box.

“God damn things busted! Took my fucking money!”

His friend’s laughter only added fuel to his frustration. The kid walked up to the bar and slammed his fist down on it.

“Where’s that fucking brawd?!”

I could now see him in my peripheral. A biker alright, leathered up and greased to the teeth.  I made no attempt to look directly at him, and tried to go on enjoying my eggs. The waitress came from around back in the kitchen. He started in on her.

“That fucking piece of shit took my money!”
“Well did ya read the sign?”
“What fucking sign?”
“The out of order sign next to the coin slot.”

He walked back over to the juke box and snatched the paper sign from the tape holding it down. He held it up for the waitress to see and then ripped it in half, dropping the two pieces to the floor.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, what fucking sign?”

She tried to maintain her composure, but I could see that the kid put a fear into her.

“Well what do you want me to do about it?”
“I want you to get your pretty little ass over here and open it up.”

She reached up to a hook on the wall behind her and grabbed a key connected to a black treble clef keychain. She walked around the bar, passed the table of mischiefs, knelt down and unlocked a side door in the juke box that pulled out a drawer full of coins. She handed him a coin.

“There! Happy?”
“That’s not my coin!”

His buddies let out in high pitched hyena like laughter.

“What?”
“I said, that’s not my coin. I want my coin.”
“But they all look the same.”
“You hear that boys? She says they all look the same. They all look the same? Well then I guess you’re going to have to give me all of them.”
“I can’t do that!”
“I’m not asking mama, I’m telling you!”

I heard a loud thump and a cry from the girl. He had kicked her to the floor. She curled up and whimpered as he and another goon tried to lift the drawer of coins. I had had enough. Without looking at them, I made my presence known.

“Boys, leave the money and get the fuck out. NOW!”
            “Holy shit! Where the hell did he come from?” one of them said.

They must not have noticed me when they came in. What guy would with a waitress that looked that good?

            “Listen old man, you just keep eating your fucking breakfast, ya dig!”
            “I can’t let you boys walk out of here with that money.”
            “I don’t think you have a choice! What the fuck are you going to do? There’s four of us, and one of you.”
            “Yeah daddy-o, the odds are not in your favor.”

I stood up from the bar stool, still not looking their way.

            “The odds have never been in my favor.”

            I picked up my hot cup of coffee from the bar and turned towards them.

            “Boys, your most important action when faced with an attack by a predator, your best chance at survival, is your first reaction.”
            “What the fuck are you talking abo…”

Before the kid could shut his mouth, I made a direct full on assault on all four of them.  My hot coffee found the face of one. The mug it was in found the face of another. Before the other two goons could drop the drawer of coins, I had already found a fork on a nearby table and put it into the thigh of the kid that started the whole mess. He fell to the floor grabbing at his leg as the last punk standing took a swing at me. He connected, and down I went. I got back to my feet just as quick as I fell from them. The kid that struck me put his fist down. He knew it was a lucky cheap shot, and that I would kick the snot out of him if he kept it up. I looked over to the mouth on the floor that I put a fork in. He was bleeding pretty good.

“Are we done here?”
“Yes sir.”

I took the bandana from my neck and tossed it to the kid on the floor.

“You’re going to want to tie that off. Stop the bleeding.”

I walked back to the bar and pulled the ten from my leather jacket.

“Here waitress, thank you for your service.”

I looked over to the floor where I thought she was still laying, but found her hanging up the phone behind the bar.”

“Cops are on their way!”

She looked at me with mascara filled tears and tried to courage a smile. Then her eyes drifted below my chin and her thankful expression turned to one of shock and disgust. I had forgotten about the mark. The bandana had been covering it. Right then I wanted to run to the bathroom mirror to see what she was seeing, but I couldn’t. I had to go, cops were coming and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around for them to cuff and cart me back to the big house.
When I stepped outside, I could hear sirens and thought it best to head the other direction, but not before burning off my last bit of adrenaline with a good kick to the biker punk’s line of scrap metal on wheels. One into the other, the heaps of shit toppled like tin soldiers. A heavy fog had rolled in behind the morning storm and I soon found sanctuary in its cover. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, and didn’t care; I just kept making tracks away from the diner, deeper into the fog.

I walked for what must have been at least three hours until I was in a forested area, clear of any people, and any police sirens. The fog had died down a little, but was still thick enough for me to only see a couple trees into the woods of ghostly white, ghost woods cut in two by the black tar road that I was walking. It was starting to get cold again, my worries shifted from the police, to fears of potentially more rain. I knew it wouldn’t be long before night would bring its death cold back around, and I hoped to god that I would come across another town or at least the barn of some middle of nowhere farm before dark.
I couldn’t get the way the waitress had looked at me out of my head. She saw the mark. Whatever it was, it was bad, bad enough to turn me from her hero into scum with just one glance. I was mad at myself for forgetting about it, and now that I left the damn bandana behind, I had nothing to cover it with. The German was right. Whatever he put on my neck, what I put on my neck, now showed me for what I really was…A MONSTER.



            It was the beginning of dusk by the time it all hit me. The diner, the bandana, the mark and the bikers; the horror of my past, it was all playing over. But this time…

10.09.2013

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 9

BLACK BEAUTY

            I was lost. I couldn’t explain it. It was all so real. It had to be real! The guard put me in cuffs and politely shoved me back to my cell. I was getting out. How?

            “Get your shit bundled up. I’ll be back in an hour or so to walk you to the west gate.”

            It only took a couple minutes to get my things together. I used the rest of the hour trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. It had to have happened. There’s no way I dreamt that shit, especially in the middle of my parole hearing. Soon enough, all doubts of the German and my time in the Nest were vaporized in a blast of H-A-T-E; black across my knuckles. I had become so accustomed to the H-A-T-E; I didn’t see it right away. The same way a new haircut stops looking new, or the way a fresh coat of paint in your home becomes so familiar, you completely forget what the old color used to be. The H-A-T-E became a part of me.
 It wasn’t until I thought about the black ink and my throat, until I thought about the contract and the mark that it even occurred to me to check my hand. After finding the letters, I foolishly tried tucking my chin and looking down at my neck, only to see my big nose and the stubble of my gray whiskers. I knew that all that black ink had to of stained its way into the gapping wounds sliced in my paper thin skin. My fingers found their way to my neck just fine without the help of my eyes, and sure enough they saw something in the rigged scar tissue, but not enough to make it out by touch alone.
Mirrors were banned from all cells, being that they are easily crafted into shanks, so I moved over to the toilet to see if I could make my reflection in the steel seat. The metal was too filthy and scratched up to get a clear look, so I shifted my face over the bowl, gazing for my neckline in the water, but it was no use. The damn thing had a constant stream that bled from the rim, stirring up the water and my reflection with it. I’d have to wait until I came across a window or perhaps the luxury of a mirror on the outside to see what that ghost kraut did to me.

“OK inmate, get your head out of that bowl. You can’t be drinking like the dogs no more. Time to go back out in the real world and act like a real human being.”

The guard rattled his baton across the bars of my cell, playing the music of “Get the Fuck Up and Over Here So I Can Put Your Cuffs On Before I Open This Gate”. The thunderous clank of the gate in motion shook the prison to life. Whooping hollers and clatter came from other cells like howling monkeys in a forest canopy. Such a display was only acted out on three occasions; fresh meat entering, dead man walking, or somebodies getting out. In my case, I had an uneasy feeling that I was all three.
Fearing they might cancel my parole and toss me in La Paloma with the birds, I knew it would be wise not to mention my stay with the German in the Nest. I kept my mouth shut and figured the sooner I could get the fuck out of that place, the sooner I could put it all behind me.

            “Hey guard, do me a favor and tell me what’s on my neck will ya?”
            “You mean besides your ugly head?”
            “Come on, don’t fuck with me!”

He took a carless glance more out of curiosity to see what I was talking about, rather than to appease me.

“Looks like a big mistake to me. Turn back around inmate and keep walking!”

I knew not to ask again or I’d find myself with a busted face and another five years just for asking questions.  He walked me to a small room with white cinderblock walls. As soon as the powder blue latex gloves came out, I knew what was coming.

            “Strip down Inmate.”
            “Really? I can understand coming in, but what am I gonna take out?”
            “You’d be surprised buddy. You think I want to do this? Now, shut your mouth and let’s get this over with.”

            With my hands on the wall, buck naked, I closed my eyes tight, and my asshole even tighter. It was a quick in and out, but something wasn’t right.

            “What the fuck! What the fuck is this? Holy shit!”

            The guard ripped the probing latex inside out from his wrist and ran out of the room in a vanishing act. It took me a few seconds to realize I was now alone. Turning away from the wall, I could see a trail of vomit marking the path the guard took to the exit from the now abandoned glove on the floor. It was withered like a deflated balloon around a small protrusion in the sleeve of the pointer finger (the one he shoved up my ass). I picked the glove up by the wrist and dangled it upside down like utters on a cow. The mass filled finger had a weight to it. Whatever was inside me was now inside this glove. Whatever it was, it was moving.
With eyes half open, I held the glove as far from my body as my arms would reach. All in one motion, I flipped the latex back to right-side out, and dropped it to the floor.  I didn’t want to look, but I had to. Just like when you pick a scab from your head or a booger from your nose. You don’t want to look, but you have to. Moving about the shit stained latex finger, in twitching jitters, were six or seven big maggots, the cause to the guard’s mad dash from my ass. 
All I could think about was my time in the Nest, it had to be real. I must have swallowed a few of the buggers alive. In fact I knew I did, at least at first. It wasn’t until I developed a strange desire for the taste that I started to chew’em dead. The maggots I took whole must have somehow made it from one end to the other; it was the only reasonable explanation. I’m just surprised they came out still wigglin’. 

“Hands back up on the fucking wall inmate!”

A black female guard known to the inmates as “Black Beauty” rushed into the cavity search room like a mother looking for the bully that beat her child. Her nickname had nothing to do with her being black, and at two hundred pounds with a face leathered in acne scars, she sure as hell wasn’t Mrs. America.  The ox of a woman always referred to her black baton as “Black Beauty”, and with a back swing that could knock your head clear out of Wriggly Field; it was her baton that the inmates feared. She was merely and extension of the baton, thus, she was “Black Beauty”.

“Now what the fuck we got going up in here? My friend tells me you got some bugs and shit coming out yo ass, you sick mutha fucka!”
“I…”
“Shut the fuck up before I take Black Beauty here and shove her so far up yo ass them bugs be coming out yo mouth! I didn’t ask you to talk!

She bent down and picked up a maggot from the floor.

“This some real shit right here. I aint even gonna make this my problem. You about to be a free man now. Way I sees it, you can take yo free ass to the clinic and let them fuck wich’ya worms.”

She dropped the maggot and stomped it flat with her black polished boot.

“Now turn around and face me inmate, and keep yo hands up.”

I did what she asked.

“You think you some bad mutha fucka don’t’cha, fighting niggas in the yard?”
            “What did you say?”
            “You heard me white boy! Don’t be acting like you don’t remember me bustin’ you upside yo Nazi head.”
            “I aint no fucking Nazi!”
            “Is that so? Last I remember, you was on top a brotha fixin to put his brains all over the pavement, fighting side by side with a bunch of skinhead punks!”

A chill danced its way up my spine into my brain, causing me to momentarily drop my arms to my side.

            “That really happened?”
“Get yo mutha fuckin’ hands back up! I know how it is, you gonna play stupid with me. You should be down on yo knees kissin’ my boots. Had I let you put that rock in that niggas head, aint no way you be ever getting out.”

The guard that puked his way out of the room, returned three shades pale with a brown box labeled “0032186, W. Blake”, in his arms. He sat it down next to Black Beauty and made haste back out of the room.  She kicked the box, scuffing it across the floor, where it came to a stop at my toes.

“Trick or treat white boy. Get dressed.”

Expecting to find the clothes I was wearing when I got locked up, I was annoyed to pull out a thrift pair of jeans and an old orange shirt with black triangles that made a jack-o-lanterns  face on the front, and read “This is my Halloween costume”, across the shoulders on the back. Then I remembered that I was covered in the guy’s blood when they booked me. My old threads were probably locked away forever in some evidence baggy or burnt in a furnace or some shit.
Half dressed; I looked up to see that Black Beauty was looking at me as if I were the scum of the earth. It was the kind of stare you get from somebody who knows something about you that you don’t want them to know. The kind of stare that sees through you but also pushes you back. I pulled the stupid Halloween shirt over my head.

“You know, I was only trying to survive. He attacked me first.”
           
Before I could get the shirt pulled down off my face she was up on me with a velocity that kept her body moving long after we came to a crushing dead end against the cinderblock wall. Her baton was holding my head against the wall at my neck.

“Listen here mutha fucka, you don’t know shit about surviving! Surviving is knowing to keep yo cracker ass out the slammer in the first place! Surviving is getting yo ass to work so you can make a paycheck to keep yo babbies fed and roof over they head! It’s doing what you have to do, not what you want to do. When you go and get yourself locked up in a place like this, full a killas, you aint doin’ so good at surviving is ya?!”

She let off me and took a step back. I finished putting the shirt on. Winded from screaming in my face, she went from a roar to a whisper.

“Surviving is watching yo mama get hauled off to prison for killin’ yo pervert daddy because he didn’t know well enough to leave his little girls alone. Then growing up to spend every day working in a place full of rapist and perverts just like yo daddy, but having the strength to fight yo urge to kill every last one of’em.”

She walked back up to me and put her hand on my chest.

“Killin’ is the easy part. Actin out on temptation is the easy part. Caving in to what rules you aint surviving, it’s giving up.  It’s fighting the animal within, keeping the beast at bay that’s the hard part. Knowing when to take responsibility for what you are. That’s surviving.”

She put her baton back in a loop holster on her belt and walked out of the room. No amount of clothing could cover my naked shame in that moment.  She was right.  I had been nothing but a captive to the animal that ruled me. A prisoner long before I ever got locked up in this place. A prisoner locked up in the solitary confinement of my own cells.
Her words beat me harder over the head than her back swing ever could. I knew in those few short sentences spoken, that she was a master of control, a control that I never could obtain. A control that so little of us ever will be capable of displaying. She was an angel in the chaos and struggle that is existence. Black Beauty, the toughest bitch I ever met.

I looked down at the box to see that it still had some more shit in it. I was happy to pull out my old black leather jacket, still folded and wrapped in rope, just how I left it on the back of my motorcycle; no longer attached to the motorcycle of course. I rummaged through the pockets and found two cigarettes and a black and white photograph of Olivia.
She was sitting naked like a pinup model in a folding lawn chair. It was my going away present to take over seas. She kissed the back side with red lipstick that has long since faded. I still remember her forcing me to promise that I wouldn’t show it to anyone and that she put it in-between the pages of a small pocket sized Bible thinking that would keep me honest to my promise. It was the only promise to her that I ever broke. How could a guy not want to show off a doll like that? Let’s just say that before the war was over, that small Bible made many a solider true believers.
When we said our goodbyes, I knew it might be the last time I would ever see her. I just didn’t think that with me going to deaths doorstep to dance in the garden of war, that he would chose to spare me, and pick instead, the rose of my life from the garden of peace.  Her face still haunts me more than any ghost I’ve ever come to encounter.

A few smaller objects were scattered about the bottom of the box. A book of matches, a pair of crooked black Wayfarers, and I don’t know how it wasn’t placed with evidence, but the red bandana that belonged to the man I killed. Perhaps they thought it was mine when they brought me in. I stuffed it in the inner pocket of my leather jacket as another guard led me to the West Gate. Then, I took my first step into the outside world in over thirty-one years.
I had no place to go and nobody waiting for me. I wandered the streets until sundown and found a park to make camp for the night. It didn’t bother me sleeping under the stars. I don’t think I would have stepped in another building at the time anyway, even if it was a nice warm home with a soft bed to sleep in.  Midnight came and went, but I couldn’t find sleep. I was afraid that I would somehow wakeup back in the Nest with the German.
I felt like I had traveled thirty years into the future. The street signs, cars, and people all looked so alien. I heard music coming from buildings that sounded like it was from another world. It was as if my mind was placed in an ageless sleep while my body and the world around me grew old. In all the distractions of this new world, my new environment, I somehow forgot about the mark on my throat. By the time I remembered, it was too dark to see for the night.
By one or two in the morning, the stars retreated behind fast moving clouds and the weather took a turn to freezing autumn rain. I decided to duck out the downpour in a cathedral that I had noticed peaking over the tree line a couple blocks from the park.  It was the only place that was open and not asking for money. The Priest new well enough that the only thing I was there to save was my clothes from getting soaked. He didn’t preach at me or ask too many questions.  After bringing me some warm towels to dry off with, he slipped me ten bucks and told me that the church serves hot meals on Wednesdays, until then, I should go get something to eat.
I split the church just before sunrise. The storm had passed and I didn’t want to give any nuns a heart-attack, walking into the chapel to see a crazy old bastard in a Halloween shirt spread out on the pews. Back near the park, I sat at a bus stop, shivering as I eagerly awaited the sun to peak its warmth over a small diner called “The Scramble” across the street, or for the neon flash of life in the “OPEN” sign on the glass door, whichever came first. The wind was starting to pick back up in the dusk and with it a strong aroma of something wonderful was carried alongside the orange and yellow leaves, something that I had completely forgotten about in prison. Coffee!
I dug around my leather jacket pockets looking for the ten from the priest. The money was in the same pocket that I stuffed the red bandana, reminding me that I had the damn thing.  I hesitated to use it, but the ice wind was too much for my ears and cheeks so I wrapped the bandana around my face like a train robber in an old western movie. The thin paisley fabric didn’t do much to block the cold out, but helped keep the sting of the wind off my face. I even put the crooked Wayfarers over the brim of my nose to shield my watering eyes from freezing shut.
I thought about things the German had said, things Black Beauty said, and the things I had done.  I thought about my past and the ghost that haunt me, metaphysically and in memory. My only fear was that I may never shake the ghost of my life, and that I would always be locked up in the haunting of it all, at least in my mind.

Just as the sun came up, the “OPEN” sign of the diner buzzed its welcoming neon glow, and I carefully cracked and jarred the ice in my blood as I stretched out stiff limbs and pulled myself from the bus stop bench. Before I could take a step out into the street, a big city bus pulled up and screeched to a stop, letting out a blast of hissing air. The bus door cranked open; an old black man was at the wheel. He took one look at me and said,

“You some sort of bank robber?”

It took me a second to understand, but then I remembered the bandana over my face. I pulled it down around my neck.

“No sir.”
“Good, because I can’t give bank robbers rides. Besides, this bus don’t make for a good getaway vehicle. Too easy for the police to make out.”

He chuckled at himself and I gave a fake smile and a huff to humor him.

“Well, you getting on or what?”
“Nor sir, I was just about to head over to that diner across the street.”
“Oh really? Be careful, they say that dinner is haunted. Spooky Scramble they call it. ”
“I’m not too worried about it.”
“No, really. They say it happened probably about thirty years ago. Some stranger to town got off at this bus station and ate his last meal in that place. I guess it was a gang of bikers that cut him up real bad after he did something to provoke them in the dinner. They killed him just down the road from here, and some of the waitresses at the Scramble say his ghost returns every now and then to order some grits from beyond the grave.”

            He busted up laughing again, but this time I didn’t humor him.

            “Ok, well if ya aint coming, I got to get going. Auf Wiedersehen.”
            “What did you say?”
            “Auf Wiedersehen. It’s German for goodbye.”

He closed the bus door and revved the hunk of metal away from the bus stop. I couldn’t believe it. How could I of sat across from the place this whole time and not noticed?  The parking lot was smaller now, and the paint on the walls had faded, but sure enough, it was the same diner where I encountered the man with the red bandana. That meant I wasn’t far from the road where I hunted him down. The road that I covered in his blood, laying the red carpet for death to make its grand entrance.  

It was then as I crossed the street that I decided I would return to the place where I took his life over thirty one years ago. I hoped that maybe, by revisiting the killing grounds, that I could, in some way, say that I’m sorry. In some way, find forgiveness.

****

But first, some coffee!