Tim Curran - Fear Me

Gordo threw him aside.

He put his eyes on Givens. Givens tried to make a break for it and Poppy took hold of him, held him.

“You’re the one that raped that little girl and strangled her,” Gordo said. “I enjoyed your sweet ass, oh yes. But it ain’t your turn neither. You ladies get out of here.”

Poppy giggled.

Givens sobbed.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Gordo said. “And close that door behind you. You think of ratting me out and I’ll use the both of you every day for a fucking month.”

Skiv and Givens raced out the door, slamming it shut behind them.

Gordo turned to Palmquist who stared up at him with dead gray eyes. There was no true fear in those eyes. In fact, there was very little of anything.

Gordo grinned. This was the one. This was the one Papa Joe wanted to feel some pain. And, good Christ, what a treat that was going to be, hell yes.

“All right, Palmquist. I been looking for you. Time to go to school. Lights out, motherfucker, lights out for you…”

Palmquist stared at his tormentors. He was not surprised by any of this. He expected it just like he’d expected it at Brickhaven. His eyes were shiny, almost mirrored, just as black as the steaming mud at the bottom of a well. He stared blankly at both men.

“You sure you want this?” he asked them, blinking his eyes.

Poppy started squeaking with laughter. He’d heard a lot of punks say some damned crazy things before Gordo had them, but this beat all and he couldn’t stop laughing.

“First thing,” Gordo said, “is I like my women to do a little begging so you start getting into the act and I won’t hurt you no more than I have to.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” Palmquist told him.

But Gordo didn’t see it that way. He moved fast for a big man. Before the words had barely left Palmquist’s mouth, he had him in those big grimy fists. He pulled him up into the air and planted a sloppy kiss on his mouth that was all tongue. No romance here, just a beast tasting its food before it took a bite. That and nothing more.

And that’s when the door opened and Romero came storming in.

“Hey-” Poppy started to say and Romero gave him two quick jabs to the face that opened his nose like a blood blister and brought him to his knees. Romero grabbed him by his greasy hair and kicked him in the stomach. When he folded up, he brought his elbow down with considerable force on the back of Poppy’s neck and Poppy hit the floor with his eyes rolling.

Gordo tossed Palmquist aside. “Fucking beaner,” he said. “You wetback fucking spic fucking bean nigger.”

As he moved at Romero, Romero leaped at him, every bit of anger and frustration and deprivation that life behind those walls had inspired in him coming out, boiling out of him like poison. Before Gordo got his hands on him, Romero drilled him in the face with three fast piston-like blows that barely even registered. Then Gordo had him, crushing him in his massive arms. Romero thumbed him in the eye and Gordo responded by delivering a head butt that drove the smaller man right to the floor.

Palmquist, bless him, tried to intervene and Gordo backhanded him, dropping him like a felled tree.

Romero pulled himself up, wiping blood from his face, knowing he was in for the pain coming at an animal like Gordo without so much as a shank or a good length of lead pipe in his hands. He ducked as Gordo tried to hit him and got two more good shots in, then kneed Gordo in the jewels. Gordo grunted like a grizzly bear that had been stropped with a belt, but no more.

He hit Romero, piledriving him to the floor.

And before Romero could do more than wonder what day it was, Gordo picked him up and threw him eight feet through the air until he collided with the wall. When he again opened his eyes, there were half a dozen hacks in the room beating Gordo down with their sticks. As he was hauled away for his mandatory thirty days in the hole, Sergeant Warres helped Romero to his feet.

“That big piece of shit started it,” Palmquist said.

“Of course he did, son. He always does.” Warres held onto Romero until he could stand on his own. “That’s gotta be the most selfless act of suicide I ever did hear of, Romero. Sure as shit. Well, let’s get you to the infirmary, get you cleaned up.”

As Romero was led away, cons pushing up to the rec room door to see what was going on, he was wondering if he had just punched his own ticket with Papa Joe or if something darker was about to punch Gordo’s.

Night.

Administrative Segregation.

Jorgensen pulled the duty because Houle was out on sick leave. Kid hadn’t been any good since he found what was left of Reggie Weems. Still…sixteen years and here Jorgensen was, pulling the graveyard shift down in the bleak, dripping cellars of Shaddock Valley. He wasn’t too happy about it. They had thirty Ad-Seg cells and eight of them were filled now that Tony Gordo was down there. In Jorgensen’s way of thinking, Warden Linnard should have kept Gordo down there permanently. He was a fucking animal and he rated a cage.

Rated more than that, I had my way, Jorgensen thought.

He sat at his little desk, a paperback western forgotten on his lap, staring down the corridor at the steel doors which sealed all the bad boys into their private, darkened hells.

Tonight was quiet.

Some nights the shitheads started acting up. One of them started hollering and, just like monkeys in the zoo, the rest started kicking their heels up. Jorgensen wasn’t in a good mood. If one of them started, it was going to be a real sorry day in their sorry little books.

He put his feet up, closed his eyes.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep because it was damp and chill down there. It had a way of getting under your skin. When he was younger and pulled Ad-Seg, he used to do sit-ups just to keep warm. Maybe he couldn’t do so many sit-ups anymore, but he was still hard and stocky. Sixteen years of working society’s trash will do that to you.

He started thinking about goddamn Houle and getting angry…but then that led to Reggie Weems and he started feeling the chill dampness down there more than anything else. Weems. And in a locked cell yet. Just like that madness over at Brickhaven Hell was that?

He heard a thumping sound from one of the cells down the way, only the more he thought about it the more it registered in his brain as kind of a wet slapping sort of noise. Expecting trouble, he walked down there, feeling his dander rising, and a slow, rising approximation of something quite akin to fear.

The corridor was silent.

The cells were silent.

Not a noise anywhere.

Probably the pipes. They got to making funny sounds down here in the bowels of Shaddock, the steam making them contract, pop and snap. He paused before each cell and listened. Quiet. So quiet in there. Even through the iron doors he could hear a few men snoring. That was good. That was fine. Let it stay like that all night.

But he was not reassured.

Something wasn’t right here and sixteen years as a corrections officer had given him a real powerful gut-sense of what was good and what was bad and what was certainly not right. He stopped in front of Gordo’s cell, Number #3, even though he’d already paused and listened. It was quiet but he had a very uncanny sort of feeling that someone was standing on the other side of the door, holding their breath, doing everything they could so as not to be heard.

Crazy, you’re thinking crazy.

No…there was something.

He pressed his ear to the door cr t

A thumping noise. Then again.

More rustling, the slap of something like a bare foot on the concrete floor, a moist gurgling sound like Gordo had just worked something snotty and phlegmy from his throat.