by R. B. Schow
Once upon a time, she and Atlas had their youth, their daughter, and a family. All of that filled him with so much joy he wanted to cry. But now, that same family had been hit with an Atom bomb and had been completely destroyed.
“I hate that you brought him here.”
“I know,” she said.
With the end of their journey together just one signature away, Atlas suffered a deep and lasting humiliation as well as the ripping-open of old wounds. All those tender memories of their lives were memories they would never make with each other again.
Mother of Christ, he thought as the heartache took hold.
It was like every lovely, vile thought was a hot, iron poker being shoved into his skull, his heart, into the deepest, darkest depths of his soul.
“Send him over,” he finally said, resolved to get this done.
“Before I do, why do you really look like that?”
He smoothed back his hair, pulled his beard straight. “I’ve been watching Vikings re-runs.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“My heart has been obliterated in here, Jade,” he confessed in a moment of unguarded vulnerability. “Another large piece cracked off just now.”
Nodding, rendered speechless by his confession, Jade abruptly stood and walked over to Rocco. She talked to him for a moment and then he got up and headed Atlas’s way. Rocco picked up the phone looking nervous, which was exactly how one should look after taking a man’s wife.
“Hello, Atlas,” he said.
“What do you want, Rocco?”
“You’re bigger than I thought you’d be. Jade says you use your size to intimidate people.”
“I was bigger than this last month, but I just did thirty days in solitary for bad behavior.”
“What constitutes bad behavior in a place like this?” Rocco asked.
“You get that kind of time for committing murder.”
“You killed someone in here?”
“I’ve killed a few people, Rocco,” he said with hooded eyes and a tight jaw. “You came here to tell me something, so just spit it out before I break through this barrier and crush your fucking windpipe.”
Rocco swallowed hard, all that beauty devoured by fear, intimidation, and nervousness. “I want to say that I’m sorry for the part I played in you getting here.”
“If you’re truly sorry, then say goodbye to my wife, walk out of her life, and never come back. You want to apologize to me the right way, that’s the way to do it.”
“I might have another way,” he said.
Atlas felt his diaphragm lift, flooding his pectoral muscles with blood. He rolled his shoulders forward slightly, his traps bulging. The hand that gripped the phone…he wanted to use that hand and that phone to destroy Rocco’s pretty face. Instead, he tried forcing a smile. The look that emerged, however, was insincere and cruel and it had the opposite effect on the man who had taken Jade from him.
“Show me how creative you can be, Rocky.”
“It’s Rocco,” he said.
“It’s whatever I say it is,” Atlas hissed. “Now speak your mind before my time expires.”
“I want to make an honest woman of her.”
“She was honest until she wasn’t,” Atlas said. “You can’t take that back no matter what you do. And if she cheated on me to be with you, then she’ll cheat on—”
“I mean to say—”
“I know what you mean to say.” The anger stewing inside of him became blistering hot and aggressive. Leaning forward in a purposefully hostile stance, he said, “You want me to sign the divorce papers, then give you my permission to marry her, is that it? Well, I have news for you, pal, I’m not her daddy, which means you don’t need my permission.”
“You took the wind out of my sails,” Rocco said, cautiously flipping his hair back out of his eyes.
Atlas pulled back and sat up straight. “Poor little Rocco,” Atlas said, less aggressive, but deadpan in his delivery.
“I think that when you two are officially finished, Jade and I can proceed forward with a new life together, all ties of her former life severed. She needs a second chance at happiness, Atlas. She won’t find it from you.”
“There’s one tie you can’t quite sever,” Atlas said, the bomb about to blow.
“What’s that?” Rocco asked.
Atlas shot up and slapped the flat of his hand on the Plexiglas partition so hard, Rocco practically jumped out of his chair.
“Our daughter, you son of a bitch!”
“Atlas, SIT DOWN!” the guard roared, pulling out the stun gun.
Atlas’s face was beet red with veins pulsing everywhere and his muscles were pulled so taut it was a wonder none of them tore in half. He sat back down and started doing his breathing exercises, the ones he used when he went from zero to psycho in one second flat.
Smoothing his hair back in place, straightening his prison blues, he calmed himself and then picked up the phone again.
Rocco looked taken aback by the outburst, as well he should be. The man had never known Alabama and yet he dismissed her like a piece of shared property between Atlas and Jade—a piece of property that simply got stolen or lost.
“Sit down,” Atlas told Rocco, mouthing the words through the Plexiglas. Rocco’s handset was lying on the table between them. Using hand gestures to direct Rocco to his chair, Atlas pointed at the receiver and said, “Pick up the damn phone.”
Rocco finally sat down and picked up the phone.
“I will agree to this on one condition,” Atlas said.
“I’m listening,” Rocco replied.
“If you ever hurt Jade in any way that scars her—I’m talking about cheating, lying, verbal abuse, physical abuse, drugs, or pornography—I will personally rip your heart out of your chest and shit in the hole I leave behind.”
“That’s a wonderful visual,” Rocco said. For some reason, he stifled a yawn and then managed to look embarrassed about it.
“Am I boring you?” Atlas asked.
“Sorry, late night.”
“Well, your perm still looks fresh.”
“I told you, it’s natural.”
“Sure it is.”
The two men looked at each other for a brief moment then Atlas said, “Put my wife back on the phone.”
Rocco got up and left without saying goodbye.
Jade stood as well, ran her hands over his arms in a soothing, supportive gesture, one that said she understood completely. That Rocco got this kind of nurturing sickened Atlas. Rocco wasn’t a kid. He was a grown-ass adult.
She returned with the divorce documents. “I’m leaving them with the guard. Look them over and then sign them.”
“Are you and GQ getting married?”
“I’m just trying to open up my options, Atlas,” she said in Russian.
He wanted to talk to her, but what could he say? That she was ending him? That he looked like hell because he was nothing but a soulless monster locked in a cage for the rest of his life? No, she wouldn’t listen to any of that. She just wouldn’t care.
“I was so in love with you once,” Atlas finally said. “It consumed me to the point that I could barely breathe when I looked at you. I remember that feeling. It’s the first good emotion I’ve had in years.”
“And how do you feel now?” she asked, still speaking Russian.
“I feel like I want to break everything I see. I want to crush it and destroy it, but not so that I can ruin anything else. Lord knows I’ve done enough of that already. It’s because I need to get all of this hate out of me.”
She looked away at first, and then she looked down. He watched her eyes fill with tears. Discreetly, she wiped away the pain. Still looking down, still speaking in Russian, she said, “I was in love with you, too. There was no part of me that was not yours forever.”
“If I get out of here someday—” he started to say.
“You won’t.”
“Yes, but if I do?”
S
he looked up, the shine now out of her eyes completely. “You’re in here for three life sentences, Atlas. What makes you think there’s any other way out?”
“Anything is possible.”
“You need to come back to reality. Your life is over. I’m done. This marriage is done.”
“I told Rocco if he ever hurts you, I’m going to beat him to death. I just want you to know that I mean it.”
“He’s good to me.”
“So was Santa Claus,” he said.
“God, you’re still a child,” she said. “Just sign the papers, alright?”
“What about Alabama?”
Mention of their missing daughter startled her. At that moment, something dark and unpleasant dawned on him: Jade never intended to bring up Alabama. She came there only to discuss the divorce.
“Don’t say her name,” she whispered.
“She’s still alive.”
“Yes, Atlas, but where?”
“How do I know?” he asked.
“I want to know how you got that picture,” she said in English, her words sharp, her tone aggressive.
“It was sent to me,” he said, purposely being vague.
“By whom?”
“A guy looking into things for me.”
“That guy from Vacaville PD?” she asked. “Foster Truitt?”
“No, not him. I can’t believe you’d just write her off like that for this…this…”—he glanced at Rocco and wanted to kill the guy—“this brainless candy-ass fucking twat.”
“Rocco’s smart in his own way.”
“He sure knows how to wear a perm well.”
“You want to make fun of people’s appearances, Atlas?” she asked with fire in her voice. “What’s with your stupid hair? And that lumberjack’s beard?”
“Alabama is alive,” he said, letting that sink in. “Doesn’t that register with you? She’s alive Jade.”
All of her youthful beauty seemed to vanish and that weary, broken look she wore for so long returned with a vengeance. “I’m so tired, Atlas.”
“As am I.”
“We have to let her go.”
Staring at her in disbelief, burning holes in her with his eyes, he felt the adrenaline hit his bloodstream like a jackhammer. “I will NEVER let her go!” he yelled, his volume rising beyond what he was told by the guards was acceptable.
Beside him, a few feet away, one of the guards said, “Cool it, Atlas. I’m not kidding!”
Ignoring both the guard and Atlas—almost like she had planned the speech and was unmoved by his outburst—Jade said, “I’m only saying that we worried ourselves sick about her when there was really nothing more we could do. She’s gone, Atlas. We can’t find her. It’s time to let go and live.”
He shot out of his chair and started punching the Plexiglas barrier over and over and over again, spittle and foul, embarrassing curse words landing on the clear shield like an affront to everything good, moral, and sane. Several old cuts opened up on his knuckles, each and every punch leaving blood splotches all over the glass as he raged.
Dancing between worlds, he spiraled into a different place, a dark place, a bottomless pit so deep he could not be reached, saved, or stopped.
The stun gun’s darts pierced his skin, filling him with electricity. His muscles squeezed tight with convulsions, and then he fell over sideways, crashing to the floor like an invalid. The physical pain was instantaneous, but it was nothing compared to the idea that Jade had given up on Alabama. Their child was still alive!
While being cuffed for the return trip to his cell, Atlas turned his neck despite his ultra-tight muscles. He did this in time to see an upset-looking Jade being escorted out of the facility by Rocco. Mr. GQ glanced over at him and Atlas tried flipping him the bird. His muscles were still too tight, so the gesture fell flat of its intended purpose.
The guard pulled him to his feet. “After your earlier incident, Warden Dicampli said that if you step out of line again—even if you fall outside the lines by a ball hair’s width, which you just did—you’re going back in the hole.”
“Warden Dicampli is a bitch,” Atlas said, his words slurring a bit.
“Be that as it may, there’s a ten-foot by ten-foot cube of utter, dismal darkness with your name written all over it.”
Atlas forced himself to wait out the effects of the high-voltage wake-up call. When he could speak with reasonable clarity, he said, “If Baxter so much as touches my bed, you tell him I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands and eat what’s left of him for breakfast.”
“Sure you will,” the guard said with a hint of laughter in his voice. “It’ll be a wonderful fanboy moment, a way to pay tribute to your cannibal crush.”
“You tell him!” he barked, his inner monster back in the driver’s seat.
The guard escorted him straight to the hole, ordered him to strip down to nothing then shoved him inside where it was pitch-black and cold.
“Warden Dicampli said he wants you to have the sock again.” The guard then picked up one of Atlas’s socks and threw it at him.
If there was one thing Atlas appreciated from the warden, it was the sock. He could sleep on it the first day, maybe even the second day as well, and when he was finally forced by his body to drop that deuce, he had something clean and soft for that first, dangerous wipe.
For a short while, the sock was comfort, the sock was dignity.
Instead of lamenting his situation, he stalked into the darkness, and then he dropped down and started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and planks.
“See you in a couple of months,” the guard finally said.
“Not if I see you first,” he mumbled.
The last two times Atlas was thrown into the hole, the guards vowed to stop talking to him. They were his only lifeline to the outside world. With that single crappy pact, these same guards severed his last link to humanity. He had never felt more alone in his life. But even though this two-month stint would test him mentally, physically, and emotionally, he vowed to grind out the time like a man. After that, he would return to his cell where he’d deal with that Baxter Kirtman the way someone should have dealt with him a long time ago.
Chapter Six
SYDNEY FOX
Sydney Fox and her three daughters—Callie, Zoey, and Maisie—rode in the empty, featureless panel van to an unknown location on what felt like the outskirts of El Paso. At first, she tried memorizing the route. But when she started losing track of the turns, she gave up in that pursuit.
They slowed down almost to a stop, drove up over a small curb then cruised ever so slowly over uneven concrete. When they finally came to a stop, she heard the driver roll down the window and start speaking to the man outside in Spanish. A moment later, she listened as someone lifted a clunky metal gate. Were they at…a warehouse? This certainly wasn’t the kind of garage door noise you’d hear at a house. When they idled inside, she heard the echoing sounds of the engine confirming they were in a warehouse or some sort of large industrial garage.
The van’s doors opened up and someone said, “Muévete.”
Hands grabbed her, shoved her, and dragged her out of the back of the van. Through all of this, she told herself she wasn’t going to freak out because she couldn’t spook her daughters. They had to be terrified as it was. Moreover, she didn’t want any retaliation from whomever she and the girls were being brought to, or handed off to, whichever was the case.
Narrowing her focus, she listened for any noises that her daughters might have made or might still be making. She knew them well. Their near-silence bothered her the most. She heard them, though. She managed to identify all three of them. Now that she was sure they were all there, her biggest fear became being separated from them.
The men who brought them there were talking with the men they had come to see, but they were conversing so quickly in Spanish she couldn’t keep up, not with a rudimentary understanding of the language at best.
As a group, they were shuffled acros
s a hard concrete floor, then led toward the familiar sounds of someone opening another set of van doors. Where the panel van’s doors sounded thin and hollow, these doors opened and closed with authority. Suddenly the hard concrete surface beneath her feet softened. Was this some sort of carpet, or a pad?
“¡Alto!” the voice barked.
She stopped.
The girls stopped.
“Lay down,” the voice commanded in English.
She lowered herself into a squat, then leaned back and landed on her butt. She was able to steady herself on what felt like a shag carpet. Slowly, she lay down on her side. A pair of hands rolled her body over onto her stomach then flattened her out. The pressure on her cheek, her breasts, her pelvic bone, and her knees was more than she wanted while feeling so scared. Hands pulled her ankles together, and then whoever was handling her stepped off the carpet.
Huffing and snorting, the duct tape constricting her lungs, everything was dark and threatening. Was she about to die? Was this an assassination instead of a kidnapping?
Inadvertently, she inhaled carpet fibers, jumped at the tickle of them then blew hard to clear her nose. Laying her head down sideways, she smelled fabric dye and warm stale air. Why the carpet?
To her dismay, her daughters were made to endure the same treatment. Should she be more or less concerned about this development? She just didn’t know.
Her panic began to diminish a bit but only because she was scrambling to figure out what the hell was going—
A pair of hands grabbed her by her armpits and hauled her forward until her cheek touched the cold concrete floor. Before she could make sense of any of this, the man flipped the carpet on top of her and began rolling her up. Her head remained free, but the rest of her was squeezed in the rug so tightly she could hardly breathe.
She was then hoisted head-first into the back of what felt like a longer van. Her head was suddenly smashed against the metal divider between the driver’s cabin and the van itself, but then the rug was pulled back a bit, giving her the relief she needed. With only her nose and ears to tell her what was going on, she sniffed the air and smelled fresh carpet, lots of fresh carpet. Her ears picked up everything, including the slight grunts of the girls as they too were shoved into what had to be a commercial carpet van.