Brian Keene - Terminal

“P-please don’t kill me…”

“Give me your shirt.”

“What—why?”

“Because that ski mask is worthless and I need something to stop my friend’s bleeding, and because Hellboy is for pussies. The Punisher is the real shit.”

“I-I don’t think I should—”

“Oscar.” I sighed. “I’m having a really bad day. You have no idea what it’s been like. So don’t make things worse, okay? Just give me the fucking shirt and quit arguing with me.”

“Do what he says, son,” Roy advised Oscar. “He’s the man in charge.”

“But I—I don’t want them to see me.” He eyed Kim and Sheila. “I’m fat. They’ll laugh…”

“Now’s definitely not the time to get embarrassed,” Dugan told him. “Suck it up.”

Mortified, Oscar slowly stripped the shirt off and handed it to me. His hands were shaking, and so was his belly. It looked like a big bowl of gelatin. Clearly uncomfortable, he tried to cross his arms over his breasts. At the very least, the dude was sporting a pair of C cups.

“Sorry, Oscar, none of that. Give me your wrists again.”

For an overweight comic book geek, he moved pretty fast.

Oscar’s foot lashed out, catching me in my shin. He paused, his face registering shock and surprise in the fact that he’d actually succeeded, and then he swung at me with one meaty fist. I caught it, twisted his arm behind his back, and yanked—hard. Something grated inside, near his shoulder, and Oscar howled.

“Shut up. Shut up you fat piece of shit or I’ll give you something to scream about! Do you understand me, motherfucker? Do you?”

Blubbering, he let his arms go limp. I tied him up with the duct tape again, and I wasn’t gentle about it either. Then I pressed the shirt against John’s bullet wound. He and Oscar moaned in unison. As I finished, Sherm burst through the door, his gun drawn and ready.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Nothing, man. Fat boy just decided that he wanted to play hero is all. I dealt with it. Where’s the manager?”

Ignoring my question, Sherm started toward Oscar, a storm brewing in his eyes. Suddenly, every phone in the bank began to ring at the same time. I think that all of us jumped.

“That’s the cops. About fucking time too. I’ll handle them. Stay here and keep them quiet. Shoot the fat boy if he acts up again.”

He ran back out of the room. The phones rang three more times and stopped. The vault was silent once more. For a moment, I wondered where Keith had been when Sherm ran back into the vault. Wouldn’t he have had a chance to escape? Maybe Sherm had bound his feet with duct tape as well.

“You guys could have helped me,” Oscar accused the rest of the hostages. “We could have rushed him. It could have all been over by now.”

They didn’t respond. Oscar leaned back against the wall, wincing as his shoulder pressed against it. Tears of shame and rage ran down his face. The rest of them looked away, studying the ceiling, the floor, the cash and valuables drawers, and the safety-deposit boxes—anything but him. Everybody except for Benjy and Sheila. Benjy was staring at John, and Sheila was watching me.

“Your friend, the one that’s an asshole, his name is Sherm?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“He mentioned Michelle and—?”

“T.J.”

“Right, T.J. Are they your wife and son?”

I nodded and turned my attention back to Oscar. “You smell like piss, man.”

“Leave me alone. Haven’t you done enough?”

I suddenly found myself almost apologizing to him, but I didn’t.

“I—I don’t mean any offense,” Sheila continued, “but did you ever stop to think about how this would affect Michelle and T.J. before you did it? Don’t you care about what’s going to happen to them if you go to jail? I can see how much you love them. You were crying earlier…”

“Yeah, of course I thought about how it would affect them. I was doing this for them.”

“What—the money?”

“Yeah, the money. What else? You don’t rob banks for blank deposit slips.”

“But you must have known that the consequences wouldn’t be worth it. No amount of money is worth that.”

I snorted. “Worth it? Consequences? You think I don’t know? Is it worth it to see my wife and son wearing decent clothes and not shit we got from the Goodwill? Is it worth it to not eat government cheese and generic corn, and to be able to buy my son a toy once in a while? Is it worth it to have heat and electric in the same month, and not have to decide between the two?

To have health insurance, and not have to swallow a bottle of aspirin every time you get a toothache? To finally have some money, other than the minimum wage bullshit I earn? Yeah, I thought it was worth it. Don’t fucking tell me about consequences. You don’t know consequences, Sheila.”

She clenched her bound fists and her voice rose in anger.

“I don’t know? Try being a single mom on welfare sometime. Don’t talk to me about government cheese. I ate it growing up and I swore that my children never would—and now Benjy’s eating it too. How do you think that makes me feel? You have no idea. And at least your son has a father. At least you’ve got a job. I can’t get anything, not even fast food. Who wants to hire a single welfare mom who can’t find a babysitter?”

“Can everybody please quit fighting?” Benjy pleaded, and we both stopped. Sheila glowered at me, and the others were silent. Across the hall, I heard Sherm talking on the phone to the police.

“No, I ain’t giving you my fucking name. If you gotta call me something, then call me Slim Shady—the real Slim Shady.”

Despite the fact that he was possibly unraveling, this struck me as the funniest thing I’d heard in a while, and I started to snicker. It was just so bizarre. Two people were dead, John was dying, hostages had been taken, we were facing jail time or worse—and Sherm was making Eminem jokes. Sheila smiled too and after a moment, so did Kim and even Oscar. The others didn’t get the joke.

“I’m sorry,” Sheila apologized. “It’s none of my business. You just seem like a nice guy. Too nice to be involved in something like this.”

“You know what they say about first appearances,” Dugan said under his breath. I ignored him.

“I’m sorry too.” I smiled at them all and turned back to Sheila. “So what happened to his father?

He bail out on you or something?”

“I’d really rather not talk about this, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh come on,” I prodded. “What else are we gonna do to pass the time? Tell me.”

She didn’t say anything at first, and I figured that I must have hit a nerve. Maybe the guy bailed on them before Benjy was born, or maybe he was abusive or Benjy had come from a drunken one-night stand. I started to tell her that I shouldn’t have asked, that it was none of my business and we should just drop the whole subject, and then she told me.

“This is hard to talk about. He—I don’t know who Benjy’s father is. I… I slept around a lot when I was younger.” She held her head up and looked me in the eye, challenging me to say something. Her lower lip trembled.

“You were with more than one guy around the time he was conceived?” Sharon asked. The whole group was focused on Sheila now, hanging on her every word.

“Yeah. Like five or six. I don’t remember for sure. I was young, and it seemed like the only way I could get attention was through sex.”

“Harlot,” Martha spat, but at least she had moved beyond the traditional “Oh my.” She clutched her crucifix necklace with her liver-spotted hands, and the look on her face was pure disgust.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Oscar said, his embarrassment at being bare-chested in front of the women and getting his ass kicked forgotten. “It’s like empowerment, you know? Using sex as a form of empowerment.”