by Michelle Amy
“Clint, relax.”
“I can’t relax!” He snarled, finally looking at me and dropping his hands to the table. “How could I have been stupid enough to think that something like this wouldn’t happen? They let me sit and rot in here until my sentence was almost over, and then they send in their goon squad to end it all.”
“I think you’re overreacting,” I said, glancing down at Clint’s now bouncing knee. “We will just make sure that we keep ourselves in big company. Do you think they would make a move if we were surrounded by witnesses?”
He shrugged one shoulder weakly. “I don’t know. They’re unpredictable. If they were sent in… if they were sent in under instruction to get rid of me the repercussions of their failure would be worse than first degree murder in prison.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said as I prodded at the cold mashed potatoes on my plate. I took a bite.
“What’s fucked up is that you’re able to eat right now,” Clint muttered.
“I’m not the one who had four hitmen get themselves sent to prison to kill me. And I’m hungry.” I took another bite of potatoes and smiled at him with my mouth full. He didn’t seem to find any relief in my warped sense of humour. Instead he hid his face in his hands again and took three long deep breaths.
“I’m going to die in here,” he whispered.
I put my fork down and kicked his shin under the table. He flinched and looked at me through his fingers. “Listen to me,” I said, “you’re not going to die in here. I’ve got your back.”
He shook his head. “They’ll kill you too.”
“They might try.”
“If they get the chance to try they will succeed. Failure is not an option. You would just be an obstacle.”
“I like to think that I can put up enough of a fight that I might deter them. Besides, we’ve been here a long time. We have connections. If you’re sure that is what they’re here for, let’s start spreading the word and see if we have anyone willing to stand by us.”
“This is prison, McCoy, not Boy Scouts.”
I laughed harder than I would have expected. I was wiping the corners of my eyes with my thumbs when I caught the glare of one of the four men at the table. He was the biggest of them all, and he had the least amount of visible un-tattooed flesh. His dark eyes were fixed on me and his mouth was curled in a sneer that showed two gold teeth.
“Don’t stare at him,” Clint hissed.
“I’m not staring,” I quipped, “we just happened to make eye contact. It happens, you know. I’ll admit, they don’t look like the kind of guys I want to test my fists against.”
“They would eat you for breakfast,” he muttered, “like you were just a bowl of frosted flakes. You have no idea… no idea what they are capable of.”
“You have that little faith in me?”
“No,” he sighed, “I have that much faith in them.”
Clint was right: as it turned out the four guys who had been eyeing him up that afternoon in the cafeteria were in fact four members of a gang that was in a blood feud with the gang Clint’s cousin was in. The robbery that went south had been Clint’s initiation. He had failed when the police caught him after he accidentally shot the cashier. I wasn’t sure how shooting someone could ever be an accident, especially when the robber went in with a loaded gun, but I never voiced this perspective to Clint.
The four men had not bothered to try to fit in easily. They picked fights one after another, creating reputations of their own. Soon the prison was full of talk about the newcomers. They were men who were afraid of nothing. They fearlessly confronted some of the ring leaders in the prison, who all either submitted to the new dictatorship or resisted. Those who resisted were usually found lying in crumpled heaps in shower stalls or their own beds.
How they were getting away with it, I have no idea.
Clint was down right petrified. He was sure that his time was coming. He expected an attack at every turn and refused to go anywhere by himself. I couldn’t blame him. The possibility of four massive goons jumping you when your guard was down was a troublesome one. Especially in this place. It left me feeling unsettled.
Within time they began making it clear that Clint was on their radar. Rumours were spreading that my friend had a whole world of pain coming for him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Link happened to be one of the messengers the Goon Squad was using. He approached Clint and I when we were lifting weights. I was on my back doing the bench press, and Clint was standing above me as my spot.
He saw Link coming and cleared his throat. “Company,” he said.
I put the bar back on the rack and sat up, resting both elbows on my knees. Link drew up in front of us. His two companions- the same ones I had beaten up on my second day in the box- were with him and avoided making eye contact with me. “What do you want, Link?” I asked, my voice a long lazy drawl of disdain.
“They sent me to tell your friend that he’s number one on their most wanted list. They’ve been working their way down to him, and now his ticket is up.” Link’s voice was shaky and quiet. He didn’t want to be standing in front of me saying such things.
I stayed where I was and felt Clint go stiff beside me. “That’s all they said?” I asked, wiping sweat from my forehead with a towel.
Link shrugged. “More or less.”
“What’s the more?”
“If you happen to be with him when they make their move, they’ll kill you first.”
“Will they?” I asked, feeling my right eyebrow arch upwards.
Link nodded somewhat frantically. “That’s what they said, not what I said. But… but they mean business, McCoy, you must know that by now. Things here have been rough since they got here. The guards don’t seem to care. I know I’m not your number one fan, but… but you guys better watch yourselves. I don’t mean that as a threat.”
He meant what he was saying. Link was afraid of them. He had good reason to be.
Link swallowed beside me and hung his head. “You gotta leave me alone, man,” he muttered, staring at his feet.
“What?” I asked, looking over at him.
“You heard him,” he nodded towards Link, “they’ll slice and dice you too if you stick with me. I don’t want that. This isn’t your problem, it’s my-”
“Dude, shut up,” I looked at Link, “you know all the scum bags in this place. Think anyone would be willing to try to take these guys down?”
Link blinked at me. “As in?”
“Don’t make me clarify, you know what I’m asking.”
Link crammed his hands into the front pocket of his sweater. “I asked around a while back. Tried to see if there were any takers. No such luck.”
“Now that things are a bit more serious do you think that could change?”
“I could ask around, if you think it’s worth a shot.”
I nodded. “I do. I hate to say this but we have to stick together. The guards aren’t going to offer us any protection, and I think we can safely assume that if they get to Clint they won’t stop there. There will be more hits after that. Now is our only shot.”
Link gnawed the inside of his cheek and nodded once. “Alright. Don’t say anything to anyone. I know who can hold their tongue and who can’t. I’ll let you know what I come up with.” He turned and headed away from us.
“Hey, Link?” I called after him.
He flinched and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Thanks, man.”
His eyes widened for the briefest moment before he turned back and left us. Clint was rubbing his hands together with enough force to be burning his palms.
“Relax, Clint, this isn’t over.”
“I can’ relax,” he snapped, “those bastards want me dead. They want me to know that they want me dead. I can’t believe-”
“They want you scared,” I told him.
“It’s working,” he quipped.
“Of course it is, but don’t let them know that. K
eep your head up. We will see this through. How else are we going to pass the time?” I tried to make light of the situation. He wasn’t having it.
“Pass the time? I’m only supposed to be in this shit hole for another three weeks. I would have been happy to pass the time playing cards or shooting hoops, but no, instead, I am going to spend it walking the halls in fear trying not to shit myself any time someone says my name.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes closed.
I stood and clapped one hand on his shoulder. “Pull yourself together. You can’t control them, but you can control yourself. Don’t let them rattle you.”
“Aren’t you worried?” His eyes searched mine.
I considered telling him that I was terrified. I was just as scared as he was. The Goon Squad were a serious group of men who I knew were capable of inflicting serious damage. I had seen the bloody wall of one of the cells on the lower levels after they beat the shit out of an inmate. That was a week ago and the prisoner was still in the infirmary. I didn’t want to become a bloody puddle to be mopped off the floors of this place. I didn’t want to see my friend become that either.
But we were fresh out of options. Our only shot was the unlikely chance that some of the other prisoners decided to stand with us. I wasn’t going to tell Clint, but I didn’t expect a single one of them to offer their help. They would be fighting against ruthless killers.
The tight knot in my gut told me the truth: it was going to be Clint and me against all four of them, and we weren’t getting out of it unscathed.
✤
They went after Clint a week after their arrival. It was early, not even six in the morning yet. We were in the showers. A couple other guys were there too. We all had the early time slot because we didn’t like to come in when it was busy. I was leaning against one of the brick walls and waiting for Clint to finish getting dressed. My sweater was over my shoulder and I was naked from the waist up and still speckled in water droplets from the shower.
When Clint had his gray uniform back on he shook his towel on his hair to get rid of the excess water. Then his eyes looked past me and widened, and both hands fell to his sides, and his towel cascaded down to the floor.
The other three guys who were in there had similar reactions. They were all staring at whoever was behind me. I turned and peered over my shoulder.
The tattooed Goon Squad stood in the entrance to the showers. They were smiling at Clint and looking by me like I wasn’t even standing there. Everyone else in the room seemed just as irrelevant to them as I did.
“Hello, cupcake,” the biggest gang banger drawled. His voice was deep and raspy. “You didn’t think we had forgotten about little old you, did you?”
Clint shook his head rapidly and his wet hair threw beads of water. “No, I didn’t think that.”
The man nodded his chin to the door. “Everyone get the fuck out.”
Wet shower shoes slapped on the tile floor as the three other inmates hurried by the four men and slipped out into the hallway. I remained where I was, which drew the attention of all of them.
“Everyone includes you, dipshit,” he snarled.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I stated. I tried to make myself sound neutral. It didn’t work. As always, I sounded angry. Angry was better than scared.
The big man’s eyes narrowed on me. “You have nothing to do with this. We are settling a debt. I strongly advise that you leave. I won’t ask again.”
My eyes slid to Clint. His face was so pale that I could see the dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t existed five minutes ago. His jaw was tight, and his fists were clenched at his sides so hard that his knuckles had turned white. He would die in here if I left him. It would not be a quick death. It would be a bloody, long, rough death.
I rolled my head back to the four men. I didn’t want to fight. I especially didn’t want to fight in a secluded room with tile floors and ceilings. Every surface would cause a significant amount of damage to a human body. I also knew that these four men had connections. The likelihood that a guard would be coming soon to stop a fight was slim to none.
It was me and Clint against them.
I decided that I didn’t want to go down being afraid. I pushed off the wall and stood slightly in front of Clint. “I don’t expect you to ask again,” I said.
They didn’t hold back. The four of them sprang into action, launching themselves into the shower room with their fists raised. Two went for me and two for Clint. I narrowed all of my focus on the two who were after me. I had to trust that Clint could handle himself. They came at the same time with one on each side.
One dropped to his knee and came in low while the other’s fist whistled towards my face. I slid to one side to avoid the collision. The man who had gone low clipped my knee with his shoulder and I went down on the tile floor harder than I had expected. The air was instantly pushed out of my lungs and I lay paralyzed and gaping like a fish out of water. They didn’t give me time to recover- not that I had expected them to.
I found myself beneath one of them, who wasted little time in wrapping his hands around my throat. The viciousness of the whole thing surprised me. They were there to get a job done. His thumbs pressed up under my jaw and cut off my air instantly. I had seconds before I would pass out. My father had done this to me before.
I did the only thing that had ever worked for me in the past: I jabbed both of my thumbs into the man’s eye sockets until I felt wet goo against my knuckles. He screamed a blood curdling scream and clutched at his face.
I revelled in the pain he was in and knocked him off of me. The other man who had gone after me was staring a moment of shock as I scrambled to my feet and kicked the blinded man backwards. He rolled on the tiles clutching his bleeding eyes and screaming bloody murder.
I went for the second man. He snarled as I ducked out of the way of his first punch and came back up to bury my own fist in his gut. Then I kicked him between the legs, doubling him over. As he bent forward to clutch at his family jewels he exposed the back of his neck, which I hammered my elbow into. He collapsed on the floor in a heap of gray sweatsuit material and sputtered in a daze. I wasn’t going to take risks. I couldn’t afford him getting up and going for round two. So I kicked him in the face and was rewarded with nothing but silence from him.
I turned my sights back on the man with bleeding eyes. He had receded to sobbing. He wasn’t worth the effort. I frantically turned to seek out Clint.
My friend was pinned face first against one of the shower walls. Somehow the biggest gang banger had managed to wrap a piece of white fabric around his neck. He had his knee in the middle of Clint’s back and held the white material in either hand, leaning backwards to make it as tight as possible. Clint was turning purple.
I leapt into the fray with an angry shout and slammed my shoulder into the man who was strangling my friend. We both collided with the other side of the shower stall. While he got his bearings I kicked him in the side of the knee and then used my own knee in the side of his head to crash his skull into the tile wall.
Blood seeped into the grout and began to spread. I left him where he sat crumpled against the wall and whirled back to Clint, who was coughing up a storm behind me as he struggled to fill his lungs with air again.
I was blocked by the fourth goon who’s shoulder collided with me as I was mid-turn. A sharp pain flared to life in my side. My hands instinctively went to protect myself, and as I lowered them the man’s fist slammed into my jaw, and another jarring flame of pain exploded in my side.
I fell to my side on the wet shower floor.
Clint called my name before I heard him and the man who had sent me to the ground begin to struggle. Clint started to shout for help. I knew no help would be coming. Not in time.
I didn’t want to look down and see the damage that had been done to me. I could feel a wetness gathering just below my ribs. Warmth leaked down my stomach. I glanced down. Blood was everywhere. It was pumping
out in dark red pulsing blooms from two stab wounds within an inch of one another below my right rib cage.
Whatever he had stabbed me with was still buried in a third hole. I didn’t remember him stabbing me three times. He had moved quickly. Clint shrieked for help again. He was cut short and a succession of thumping sounds followed.
I raised my head to seek out my friend. The edges of my vision were blurring. I was going to pass out soon. There was a heaviness settling into my bones that invited me to sleep. I wanted so badly to just sleep.
But Clint was being pummelled by fists. He was crouched down and had his left side pressed against the wall. His knees were raised in front of his chest and he was covering his face with his hands and forearms. The goon assailing him was not being kind. I heard his knee crack one of Clint’s ribs. My friend let out a pitiful wail and his arms fell as he clutched at his side.
The goon took his opportunity and landed two punches to the side of Clint’s face. He pitched forward and landed face first on the tile. His elbows raised as he tried to push himself back up. The man pinned him down with a knee in his back, and then grabbed one of Clint’s arms and began pulling backwards until the sound of cracking bone reverberated in the walls and in the floor beneath me.
I gritted my teeth as my vision tunnelled in on the man on top of Clint. Clint was screaming. I looked down at the dull glint of silver protruding from my flesh and wrapped my fingers around it. It was sharp on that end too, and as I began to pull it free I felt it cut into my palms and fingers. The pain nearly sent me into unconsciousness. I pushed it away, focusing on the sound of Clint screaming. I needed to get up. He was going to die if I didn’t.
The metal came free and more blood leaked out of me. I ignored it, set my stare on my victim, and rose from the tile on wobbling knees. The blood pumping out of me began leaking down my side. It had stained the waistband of my pants and began seeping farther and farther down. By the time I stood above Clint’s assailment, my entire thigh was red.