Steve Vernon Special Edition Gift Pack, Vol 1

by Vernon, Steve

  Thump-thump-thump-thump.

  And louder.

  Thump/thump/thump/thump.

  THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

  Then I saw it. The ball, sitting there not more than five feet away, like it had paused to catch its breath. I could see it real close, that orangey-brown kind of basketball color, street dirt and a little blood smeared on it, the inked outlines like the hair's of a sniper's bull's eye sight, its basketball studded like some kind of reptilian ball bearing.

  I swear I could see it breathing.

  Patiently breathing.

  Damn it.

  It had to be my imagination.

  I tried to snake my left arm to grab it in. Quiet like, because I didn't want the police to hear.

  I remember once seeing a kid at a zoo reach into an alligator pen to try and pet one of the big bastards, and I'm thinking about that now as I reach for that goddamn basketball.

  I touch it. Or maybe it let me touch it.

  It felt cold.

  I felt it breathe.

  In, out. In, out.

  Only it felt as if it were breathing me. Inhaling me, in and out, sucking me in, spitting me out.

  Tasting me.

  In, out.

  Then it got excited like it knew my scent and then it started to bounce.

  Bounced hard.

  THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP - BANG!

  I fired my Glock without thinking. I don't even remember having it in my hand. I know I couldn't have missed, not this close up, but somehow I must have, because the damn ball was still bouncing.

  That's when I started screaming.

  The police were all over the boxes before I had a chance to stop. I heard them crashing through the boxes, overturning crate after crate like kids hunting for Easter eggs, only I'm too busy screaming and firing shot after shot at that goddamned basketball.

  It's been nine months since they've locked me in the cell. I keep begging my state-appointed lawyer to stop making his appeals, but he keeps telling me that I'm entitled to them, that it's his job to make them, over and over and over, and every time he makes one of them the state kicks my name back down on the list of those waiting to die.

  I don't care about my lawyer. I don't care about the state. I don't give a damn about my legal rights, not a single one of them. I just want that state-appointed needle, like a junkie wants his next fix. I want that jolt that will finally put me under. Finally let me grab some sleep.

  The guards have stopped taking the basketball away. They yelled at me for a while, like I was somehow sneaking it back into my cell, even though I never leave the cell these days, not even for my mandatory exercise periods. The guards have even stopped arguing with me over that. They know it's not my fault, that I can't leave this cell. They know that goddamned basketball won't let me go.

  I remember the day that three of the biggest guards tried to wrestle it out of the cell. If I hadn't been screaming so loudly it probably would have been funny. Those three great big, overachieving bar bouncers, hanging on to this kid's basketball as it bounced them across the floor. They were ready to quit when the first rib snapped, but it didn't let them go right off, like it wanted to play with them for a while.

  I think it was enjoying itself too much to stop too soon, or maybe it just wanted to teach them a lesson. The guard that died first, his head slamming like an overripe melon against the bloodstained concrete floor, he was the lucky one.

  They should have known better. They shouldn't have even tried. Even the times it lets itself get taken away, it just comes back. Like that goddamned bad penny you hear about, it just keeps coming back.

  Now they just try and pretend it isn't even there. They just slide my meals through the little slip hole and they sort of slide their eyes away, like they were looking at something else besides that goddamned basketball.

  That's the hell of it. The way they pretend that nothing's wrong.

  I sometimes wonder why it even lets me eat. I mean, it wants me dead doesn't it?

  Maybe it's just enjoying itself.

  How the hell should I know? It's a basketball, for Christ's sake. It's not like it's a human or a ghost or a zombie. It's a goddamned echo, that's all it is. It's just a goddamned echo.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  When I start thinking about all the things it might be but isn't, it is usually about the time I start screaming. And whenever I start to scream it bounces all the faster, like my screaming excites it.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  It's sitting there now in the corner of my cell, bouncing, bouncing, and bouncing. Sometimes it likes to run up to my bed. Sometimes it bounces itself right under the bed, making sure I don't get too much sleep.

  I think that's what I miss most of all, besides my sanity. A little sleep. Just a little shut-eye. I get some, you know, nodding off every now and then. I have to, don't I?

  Maybe just a little, drifting in and out, between bounces.

  Don't I?

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  I hear it now, like a mad-dizzying trip hammer thumping, a thousand mad horses all screaming to get out of a stall at once, and I scream for the guards to come get me, I scream for the executioner's needle, I scream for them to come and kill me and drop me in a crate in the cemetery where I can scream for a thousand more years.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  I keep screaming, because I know that sooner or later somebody will come and get me. Sooner or later they're going to come and carefully open my cell door, and march me carefully down the hall to the last door that's been waiting for me since I shot Chico Fat and the other two and the kid, don't forget the fucking kid.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  And when they come and get me the ball is going to follow me down the hall like an eager puppy, and then I'm going to be poked full of death in front of an audience of strangers, as few as possible because the authorities don't really want to try and explain that goddamned basketball.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  And then they're going to bury me in the farthest corner of the prison graveyard, and they're going to drop me into my grave in a canvas sack rather than a wooden box, so they don't have to listen to the bouncing of that basketball that will somehow find its way into my coffin, so that they don't have to hear the bouncing and the screaming that I know is going to be echoing beneath the dirt for more years than I care to imagine.

  Thump - thump - thump - thump.

  The ears.

  That's where I want it.

  When they give me the needle I want them to give it to me in my ears first.

  That's what I said.

  I want my ears to die, first.

  Are you listening?