Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

It’s cold outside. For some reason he’s suddenly transported back to when he was a kid, when he’d have to bike to school in freezing-cold weather along with thousands of other kids across the city, icy roads and frosty air, breath forming clouds in front of his face. Only right now it’s a bit darker than what it was when he used to leave for school. It’s still only seven thirty. People are driving to work with the lights on and with coffee cups in their drink holders, driving to a job involving numbers or materials or words or physical labor-none of them, he imagines, with the idea in mind of killing somebody. It’s too early for the protesters to be showing up. He turns on the radio. Not too early for the protesters to be calling in.

He parks on the street between the office building and the courts, thinks better of it, then moves his car just around the corner, adjacent to the building he’ll be shooting from. Soon this whole area will fill up, and after the shooting he doesn’t want to get caught in a traffic jam ten yards from the back entrance to the court.

It’s a thirty-second walk back to the office building. He takes the stairs up to the third floor and unlocks the office door. The duct tape has held the drop cloth in place, so the office is dark. He paces the office for half a minute, then sits down and leans against the wall. He’s brought a thermos with him full of coffee, and he pours himself one and slowly sips at it and watches the office as it slowly becomes lighter. He takes a photograph of Angela out from his pocket and rests it on his thigh.

What are you doing? she asks him.

“Today’s the day,” he tells her.

You’re going to kill him?

“Yes,” he tells her, but of course she isn’t really here, he knows that, but boy, wouldn’t it be great if somehow, somewhere, she really could hear him. “I know it doesn’t bring you back,” he tells her, “but I hope it makes you feel better.”

You think killing him honors me? she asks. You think taking a life in your daughter’s name is something mom would want? Or I would want?

“Yes,” he says.

She doesn’t answer him.

“Isn’t it?”

Yes, she says.

“I wasn’t there to protect you. This isn’t going to make it right, but it’s all I can do.”

I’m sorry you weren’t there to protect me either, she says. You were meant to be there. That was your job.

“I know,” he says, and he’s crying now. “I’m sorry.”

Thank you for killing him for me, she says, and I’m glad you’re doing it in my name. Make him suffer, Daddy. Make him suffer and then he can rot in Hell. I just wish you could kill him ten times over. A hundred times over.

“I miss you, baby,” he says, and he puts the photograph back into his pocket and reaches up into the ceiling for the gun.

I wake up at seven o’clock. We all do. A loud buzzer goes off. It rips into our dreams and puts an end to any of the good stuff going on in there. Though in this case the good stuff was me remembering the blank look on Ronald’s face when the hammer cracked open his skull. He just stood there staring at me for a few seconds. I think he knew he was dead, but his body was still catching up. I thought he would have dropped like a rock, but it took two or three seconds for him to fall. It was the strangest thing, a physics-defying thing. Killers like to say they don’t remember what happened-that they just snapped, that it was a dream. But the exact opposite is true. Killing has a way of making you feel alive-who the hell would want to forget that?

I use the toilet and wait patiently in my cell for thirty minutes until my block is taken through for breakfast, which appears to be something a patient with the Ebola virus coughed up. My stomach is feeling good. Whatever was in that sandwich has done its best, it’s gone through the motions, and I’ve come out on top. Adam comes and finds me. He looks me up and down. He doesn’t look happy.

“You look better, Middleton.”

“Fuck you,” I tell him.

He laughs. “We showed those photos of you eating that sandwich to a lot of our buddies,” he tells me. “Got a whole lot of laughs.”

“I just need a list,” I tell him.

“What?”

“A list. Because when I get out of here, I’m going to fucking kill every one of them, and I’m going to start with you.”

He laughs at me again, even harder this time. “Christ, Joe, you really do make me laugh. This prison needs people like you, and thankfully for us you’re going to be here for a very long time-unless they end up hanging you, which would be a shame, I guess, until the next funny bastard comes along and we forget all about you.”

He takes me down to the showers. I get cleaned up and Adam tosses me some clothes. It’s a suit. It’s the same suit other prisoners have worn in the past who are my size. The same suit I wore when I was charged a few days after I was arrested. A gray suit with a dark blue shirt and black shoes. I look like a bank manager. Only one without shoelaces or a belt. Adam promises me I’ll be given those before I leave. The shirt has stains in the armpits and smells like cabbage and I shake it out, hoping whatever head lice are asleep in there lands on the floor.

I’m taken back to my cell. I have to wait an hour. Most of it I spend sitting on the edge of my bed wondering about the trial. For the first time the reality of it is all kicking in. I always knew this day was coming, but part of me always believed it never would-part of me was sure I’d be out of here by now, that the police would have found a reason to let me go. The trial date just kept on rolling forward and now it’s here, and suddenly the nerves of the trial kick in and I almost throw up. And then I do throw up. When I’m done I back away from the toilet and Caleb Cole is standing in my doorway.

“A farewell present,” he says, and then he rushes me with something sharp.

I don’t even get to my feet before he hits me, but I manage to lift my pillow so whatever he is trying to stab me with-it actually is a filed-down toothbrush-goes into the pillow, but doesn’t come right through, stopping somewhere short of my hand. I use my other hand to punch him in the balls. He staggers back, but not as far as I’d have thought, and then I throw the pillow at him in what, to anybody else, would probably look quite comical.

He comes at me again, only this time I’m able to get to my feet. I don’t know what I’m doing other than reacting. A survival instinct has kicked in. The room, other than our footsteps and muffled grunts, is silent. This is what a real fight sounds like. I get both my hands around his wrist with the toothbrush, and he uses his free hand this time to punch me in the balls. Or ball. I drop quickly to my knees, but don’t let go of his wrist, knowing it’s the only thing keeping me alive. I pull him forward at the same time. His breathing gets louder. So does mine. I topple back-my back on the bed, my shins on the floor, and feet pinned beneath them. He topples onto me, and for the moment neither of us are throwing punches. Instead both of us are focusing on the toothbrush. I’m guessing nine out of ten dentists wouldn’t recommend having your stomach perforated by one. And the tenth dentist is either a prick or is the one doing the perforating.

“Die, you fucker,” Cole says.

I say nothing. I just keep focusing on the toothbrush. It’s angling at my chest and getting closer as he pushes his body weight into it.

“Die,” Cole repeats, the word thrown at me with spittle and hate. I try pushing upward, but it’s a losing battle.

So I do the only thing left to do. I scream like a girl.