The bullet hit him in his chest and his pale skin instantly was covered with blood.
He collapsed to the floor.
I gasped and dropped the gun.
I watched his body continue to shudder and his breathing become ragged. I walked over to him filled with complete dread and shock. I had shot him and still no Santana. Please, God, I prayed silently. Don’t let this man die.
I reached for the phone and dialed 911.
When they answered I said simply, in a bit of a shock, “I shot a man.”
Chapter 32
Two Months Later . . .
Dear Santana,
If you are alive I need to hear from you! Babe, you have no idea how much I miss and need you. Jail is no joke. Do you know that some of the chicks in here are so jealous of me that they jumped me in the shower and used a shank to cut off all my hair! Crazy huh? The thing I’m wondering is what did they plan on doing with the hair? But after about ten ass whippings, I started fighting back and now they leave me alone. They found out I could sing. Now, every time I turn around someone is asking me to sing a tune for them. Of course, at least once a day I sing our song, “Excuse me.” But seriously now, I don’t know what happened to you that night. If this is about the case you don’t have to hide out anymore. You didn’t pull the trigger, I did. And I am the one who got life in prison for it. I’m sure you didn’t want to be held accountable for any of it. But it’s over now. Santana, I desperately need to see you and for you to start writing me. I love you so much. I always said that you are my everything. And without hearing from you, baby, my days are so gloomy. Now I don’t know where you are. But I’m going to give this letter to my mother. She is going to visit me today. Would you believe that my sister, Arianna, and even Justin have all come to see me? They all forgave me. That makes me so happy. I just wish it were under other circumstances. I wish I were free. Sometimes when we go outside for rec, the birds fly over my head and I just watch them and smile. I close my eyes and pretend that I’m one of them and able to fly out of this place. But in all honesty, when I open my eyes and I see the birds are gone, I realize that my freedom is too. There is nothing I can do about it. At first I tried to take my life by hanging myself. But it didn’t work. A CO found me just before I went out completely. So now I just have to keep on moving forward. Well, I have to go. Visiting is soon. Please, please, please respond. I love you always,
Alexis
PS: Please, please, please write me, Santana!
I folded the letter and placed it in an envelope.
So much had transpired in the last two months. For starters, I was charged with first-degree murder. Yes, he died from that one gunshot. Turns out the bullet penetrated his ribcage and entered his heart. What luck I had. His parents were so enraged they wanted the death penalty. So did the DA, and that was what they asked for. Nothing felt worse than being arrested and sent to jail. Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen to me. Not a twenty-four-year-old college graduate, with the world at her feet that went down in a blaze. I was on various news stations and the world seemed to be baffled as to how I could be in that position.
My parents, thank God, hired a lawyer, but in all honesty it just never looked good. I mean I had killed an unarmed man who I was there to rob. Often, I wished I could turn back time and never listen to Santana when he told me about this scheme. If I really loved him and he really loved me we should have both found another way to get by without doing illegal things. I, to this day, don’t know what happened to Santana. I don’t know if he is in jail, dead, or if he ran off. Did I blame him for my predicament? No, because I was just as much a part of the incident as he was. And I made the dumb choice to go through with the plan when Santana disappeared. I could have walked away. I had the gun after all. I could have left. My lawyer tried to argue that I was a good kid, from a good family, who had never been in trouble with the law. He told the court that I never planned to go to that hotel and to kill that man, and that I acted out of panic and felt my life was in danger.
The day of the final ruling, the judge gave it to me. My parents, sister, Justin, Arianna, and even members of my church were there. They had done so many barbeques and praying events for my freedom it was crazy.
The courtroom was super quiet when the judge spoke. “While the jurors will make the final verdict, I will say this, Ms. Vancamp. You should be ashamed of the poor choices you made. You have the whole world talking about you, scratching their heads, trying to figure out how someone with the opportunity you had would blow it. And while you may not have gone to that hotel that night to commit murder, murder is in fact what you did. You went to the hotel with the intent to rob that man. Had you not made the choice to do that, you probably wouldn’t be standing in my courtroom today.”
He cleared his throat. “Jurors, do you have your verdict?”
One of the jurors, a young Hispanic girl who looked around my age, stood and said,
“We, the jurors, find the defendant, Alexis Vancamp, guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to twenty years to life, without the possibility of parole.”
I heard my mother scream at the top of her lungs. I collapsed on the floor, literally under the table. It took for the CO and my lawyer to get me to a standing position. But as they had me standing, the room started spinning and I passed out.
I was in denial for a long time after my sentencing. I didn’t bother eating or even get out of my bed. I was suicidal and wanted to die. But after my suicide attempt, I accepted that this was my fate.
“Vancamp, let’s go. Step out.”
I snapped out of my thoughts, grabbed my letter, stepped out of my cell, and followed the guard to the visiting area.
I saw my mother sitting at a table. I was happy that I was no longer at Twin Towers because visiting was always behind a glass window. Here, we were able to hug each other and hold hands at Women’s Valley State Prison.
As I walked, I smoothed my short hair back and walked over to my mother with the letter in my hand. My mother’s eyes were watery as she saw me.
“Hey, Mom.” I gave her a hug.
She felt like skin and bones and looked that way, too. “What happened to your hair?”
“Aww. Nothing, Mom. I cut it off. It was too much trouble, keeping it up in here.” I lied because I didn’t want to stress my mother out more. “So are you back at work?”
“I’m still on my leave of absence.”
“Oh, okay. How is everyone?”
“You need to ask?” she managed to choke out. She looked at me like she was so heartbroken. It made me feel bad. I knew I had greatly disappointed her. But all that I did, I did for the love of a man. So that we could survive together.
“Mom, I was wondering if you could do me a big favor.”
“I put money on your books, so—”
“No, Mom. It’s not about that. It’s about . . .” I cleared my throat. “It’s about Santana.”
“Wait a minute. After all that he has done, from leaving you that night, to dropping off the face of the earth, you have the nerve to mention that man’s name. You have ruined your own life on account of that man!”
“Mom, see? That’s the thing you never understood. Everything I did for and with him was because I wanted to. Am I mad he disappeared that night? Yes. But for all I know, he could be dead somewhere; he could be in jail. He wouldn’t have just left me, Mom. Don’t you get it? My love for him is forever. It’s not going anywhere and I know he feels the same.”
“Stop it, Alexis! Just stop it about that man.”
“Mom. I’ll stop when I find out where he is. I know I asked you before and you denied me because your focus was on my case and all, but, Mom, I really need you to go over to the Carmelitos and see if he is there or if anyone has seen him. If what you feel is true, that he is deliberately ignoring me, and he tells me himself, then and only then will I let this go.”
“Alexis!” She put a hand to her chest and lowered her voice.
“You have to stop it. You have to let this go,” she told me calmly.
“I love him. Don’t you get it?”
“He is not dead, okay? He is not in jail.”
Thank God, I thought, crying happy tears. “How do you know, Mom? Then where is he? Can you take the letter to him?” I shoved it near her hands on the table.
“You can’t see that man again. You can’t love that man, understood?”
Here she goes again. “Mom, why are you—”
“He’s your brother!”
I looked at my mother, confused. “Mom? What are you talking about?”
She slid a folded-up piece of lined paper toward me. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Santana’s handwriting on it:
Yeah, you punk-ass bitch! You thought you were just going to go through life living well after the mistake you called yourself getting rid of twenty-nine years ago? I like how you had that clause in your adoption, that you didn’t want to be contacted by me should I ever grow up and want to know who my real mother is. And you have the nerve to be a fucking social worker? That was some cold shit. All I ever wanted was to see what it felt like to have my mother’s love. My birth certificate said my father is unknown. You were such a fucking tramp-ass bitch that you don’t even know who you got pregnant by. So as soon as I hit eighteen, I took my first Yokum check and hired a PI to find your ass.
Do you know all the suffering that I had to go through because you couldn’t just have kept me and loved me? I have been abused and given the fuck away. You were my mother. You were supposed to love me, take care of me, make sure I didn’t get hurt like you did for those spoiled bitches. Well, looks like they’re hurt now. That dumb bitch Alexis actually thought I loved her when this was all a setup from the very beginning. The plan was to ruin what you loved most: your precious daughters. Originally, I wasn’t going to fuck with Bria. I wanted the bitch who took my spot as the oldest, and her dumb ass was putty in my hands. So my plan was called the Demise of Alexis Vancamp. I brainwashed her from day one. I lied about myself having a fiancée. Man, I set her ass up over and over again. But then, when Bria moved in, I figured, why not ruin her life too? But who knew it would be so easy? Who knew that Alexis would be so dumb and become so in love with me? She got herself in some hot water when she killed that innocent man. I just thought she would end up raped or beat up or some shit like that by her going to a racist spot. I didn’t think her scary, punk ass would ever pull the trigger of a gun, much less bust a grape in a fruit fight. So her life is over. She might as well kill herself. And as for your other little bitch, she will be an addict for the rest of her fucking life. She will never be able to live like a normal person. I don’t care how many times you put her in rehab. I give her six more months, she will be on Fig, selling her pussy. And that’s what you get, bitch. I hope you cry every day for the rest of your life! I hope your future days are dark and lonely like my years were because my mother didn’t love me enough to just keep me. Matter of fact, I hope you kill yourself, bitch! Meet your demise with your daughters.
Yours truly,
Santana Marcelino
I gasped as the letter dropped from my hands and floated to the ground. Horrified, I looked at my mother.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t know until I got this letter last week. Years ago, I was in college and I found out I was pregnant from a one-night stand. My parents were very religious. My father was a deacon and I decided it was best to give the baby up because they didn’t believe in abortion and . . .”
I stopped listening. All this was a lie? The love we shared, it was all a lie? I did this all for nothing? And now I had lost my whole life behind it. I would rot away in prison. Santana never loved me. He used me to hurt our mother.
I stood and clawed at my face, screaming at the top of my lungs. All this time I had been sleeping with my brother.
“Baby, don’t.” I closed my eyes to my mother. She pulled my hands away from my face.
I pulled away from her. “Nooooooo!” I screamed. “This can’t be real!”
My mother started bawling. “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t know my past would come back to haunt you.”
I backed away from her. I turned on my heels and ran away from her, her words, her saying sorry. I kept telling myself that this was a lie, a dream. A fucking nightmare.
But as two COs chased after me and tackled me down to the ground, and as I continued to scream and pinch myself, I never found myself waking up from my bed. I was in the same place, very much awake. I realized this was far from a dream and this was real, very much real, and this was my life . . . My demise.
The End
About the Author
Karen Williams, who also writes as Braya Spice, is the author of Harlem On Lock, The People vs. Cashmere, Dirty To The Grave, Thug In Me, Sweet Giselle, Aphrodisiacs: Erotic Short Stories, and Dear Drama. She contributed to the anthologies Around The Way Girls 7 and Even Sinners Still Have Souls Too. She graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills with a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Communications. She works as a probation officer and lives in Bellflower, CA with her two kids, Adara, 15, and Bralynn, 3.
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The Demise of Alexis Vancamp Copyright © 2013 Karen Williams
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ISBN: 978-1-6228-6137-8
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
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