Immediately after Joe went into the room, Belton had told Cindy that Joe’s visitors were the mother and sister of one of his victims. The warden had granted their request to visit Joseph even though they weren’t on his visitor’s list. The warden had made an exception and Cindy wondered if it had only been to help the two women get whatever closure they had come seeking or if it had also been done to further torture Joseph, to punish him for his crimes, to break him. Obviously, Joseph Miles wasn’t the remorseless sadist the tabloids and talk shows had made him out to be. And that confused Cindy. She’d read quite a bit about serial killers. It was a bit of a hobby. They were sociopaths, incapable of guilt or empathy or remorse. That didn’t fit at all with Joseph Miles’ reaction to confronting the family of his victims. If it was an act, it was damn convincing and he was staying in character long after the curtain had fallen.
Before she knew what she was doing, Cindy’s maternal instincts took over. She reached out and patted Joe on the back, consoling him. He turned to look at her, eyes red from crying, and nodded, acknowledging her moment of compassion. Belton jabbed the big cannibal in the small of his back with the baton, ushering him forward.
“Keep your ass movin’, Miles! We ain’t got all damn day!”
Joe nodded and continued shuffling along the tier toward his cell.
“Cryin’ like a little bitch! I bet you wasn’t cryin’ when you was eatin’ that woman’s daughter. How much you think your victims’ loved ones are crying now? Fuck your bitch-ass tears!”
Cindy saw the look that passed over Joe’s face when he locked eyes with Belton. There was no remorse in it now, no mercy, no forgiveness. They didn’t waver and he didn’t blink once. His eyes looked completely empty, cold, like the eyes of a snake. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth that had been filed to points. For a moment she was afraid the big inmate was going to lunge for her new partner, and despite his restraints, she wasn’t sure either of them could have stopped him before Joseph Miles tore Belton’s throat out.
Belton’s mouth dropped open and his eyes got big and watery. He could sense it too, his own fragile mortality confronted by a force of merciless savagery.
Then Joe turned and continued shuffling forward toward his cell.
Cindy and Belton swallowed hard. They didn’t relax again until Joseph Miles was once again safe in his cell.
As Cindy uncuffed his wrists and ankles and then turned and slowly closed the door, Joseph Miles turned to her with a bashful, wounded look, staring at the ground before slowly raising his tear-filled, ice blue eyes to hers. “I want to thank you for … your kindness. This entire ordeal has been so hard on me. Professor Locke has been the only one who understands my illness, the only one trying to help me. I don’t want to hurt people. I want to get better. Anyway, thanks.”
Cindy stood in the doorway, the cell door partially open, speechless. Her bottom lip hung open and her mouth worked soundlessly. “Um … yeah … uh … you’re welcome.” She gave him a small nod and started to close the door again.
His next words stopped her cold and made the blood rush to her face and her loins. “You’re very beautiful, you know? You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen since my Alicia. I just thought you should know that. Most women don’t hear that enough. Men can be jerks sometimes when it comes to giving a lady compliments,” he said, still maintaining eye-contact with his deep blue eyes, dark hair, high cheekbones, and strong, dimpled chin. He had the looks of a matinee idol, a leading man, like an action star or a superhero. He looked almost like a young Christopher Reeve with much, much more muscle.
He was working her. She knew it. But he was right. No one had told her she was beautiful since her first year of marriage, no one except inmates who hadn’t seen a woman in years. Two kids and one divorce later, hearing a compliment like that from someone who looked like Joe was more than just rare, it was like hearing the voice of God.
She’d allowed herself to get too close to inmates before. It was an occupational hazard. She’d had an affair with a drug dealer in Pelican Bay that lasted more than a year. He was a huge black man with biceps as big as her head, a shaved scalp, and a way with words that had made her melt. His name was Frank White and he’d been a major cocaine dealer who was rumored to have murdered more than a dozen people, rival drug dealers, on the streets of Oakland. She used to let him out of his cell at night and have sex with him in stairwells, in the shower, the exercise room, the kitchen, the library, the laundry, wherever they could find a moment’s peace. They’d fucked in almost every corner of the prison that the surveillance cameras didn’t reach. Luckily she knew the location of them all. Once rumors of her affair had begun to spread throughout the prison and the other COs had begun whispering about her behind her back, she put in for a transfer. Besides, Frank had gotten greedy and had started asking her to smuggle him things into the prison. Little things at first, like chewing gum, his favorite cupcakes, special pens that had good ink for making prison tattoos. Cindy wasn’t completely stupid though. She knew where it was headed. Soon he would have been asking her to help him smuggle drugs into the prison. It was time to get out. Fucking an inmate was one thing; getting caught with a balloon full of China White in her cunt and winding up an inmate? That was something else entirely. So she’d left. Out of the frying pan and into the fiery gaze of Joseph Miles.
“Uh, th-thank you,” she stammered, slamming the door and hurrying off down the tier before Belton could see how deeply she was blushing. As soon as possible, she would have to get her shift changed. As long as she was working with Belton, he would be watching her, scrutinizing her every move, and she wanted to talk to Joseph Miles more. She wanted to find out more about him, why he’d done the horrible things he’d been convicted of and, most of all, she wanted him to look at her like that again, like she was the most desirable creature on Earth and she wanted to hear his sweet compliments. She needed to hear them. The prisons had long been the only place where men seemed to still find her attractive, and every woman needed to feel attractive.
She caught up with Officer Belton, who had stormed off down the tier like she had done him some personal affront by pausing to talk to the big serial killer. “Who’s Professor Locke?”
Belton stopped and looked her up and down, not disguising his disdain for her, going out of his way to make it clear. “You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s another idiot who’s been fooled by that animal in there.”
Eleven
Joe’s mind was working overtime. For the first time in months he had options. Now he had to figure out what his next steps would be, how to turn these new developments into advantages, and what he would do when he finally got out. There was no doubt in his mind now. He would get out.
If he could seduce Officer Addison, get her to fall in love with him, convince her that his disease was real and there was a cure out there somewhere and he knew how to get to it, then he might be able talk her into smuggling him out of here.
Joe reached out until his fingertips touched the walls of his 6x12 cell. These walls had been the totality of his world for the last several months. The idea of being outside them, away from the concrete and steel, the chains, psychotropic drugs, and scratchy wool blankets, the screams and cries of the deranged and the condemned consumed his thoughts. Outside these walls was flesh. There were women who loved him. Women who would do anything for him. There was Selene, but she seemed so far away, farther away now, after seeing Lana, than she had an hour ago.
“Lana.” Joe spoke the name aloud and smiled. He tried to imagine Alicia, but now her face had been supplanted by the fierce and lovely visage of her younger sister, Lana. Lana’s furious, tear-filled eyes haunted him. Joe made a mental note to find her if he ever made it out of prison. Just knowing she was out there made it harder for him to accept his incarceration. He knew that she was not Alicia, yet some part of him could not help but think of her as Alicia reborn and rejuvenated. They shared the same blood, the same wickedly cur
vaceous figure, the same heartbreakingly pretty face. Joe closed his eyes and imagined himself kissing Lana’s luscious, bow-shaped lips. He imagined squeezing her hips, running his fingertips over her thighs, her belly, the swell of her bosom, each nipple, her collarbones, her jawline. He moaned deeply as he remembered his first night with Alicia and replayed it in his mind, only this time with Lana. He imagined licking her in places no other man had. He imagined what her face would look like at the moment of orgasm and in his mind he saw Lana’s bottom lip quiver, her brow knit in an expression of rage and ecstasy, a scream, like a war cry tearing from her throat as her body bucked and jerked.
“Lana.” Joe said her name again in a breathless whisper as he took himself in hand and began to stroke his engorged sex organ. “Lana,” he said again. Licking his palm before rubbing the head of his cock, he imagined it was Lana’s sweet vagina surrounding his manhood rather than his own calloused palm.
“Lana!” he gasped, tugging furiously at himself as he imagined bending her over and entering her from behind just as he had Alicia. Then he imagined Officer Addison bent over on all fours. His mind filled in the blanks for the parts of her he’d not yet glimpsed. He imagined her voluptuous posterior without those ridiculous uniform pants. He imagined those tiny breasts barely filling his hands. He imagined her dimpled cheeks and puppy-dog eyes imploring him not to stop as he pounded deep into her from behind.
“Addison,” Joe nearly shouted as his legs locked. His back arched and he let out a roar, snarling and gnashing his serrated teeth as he shot his seed across the room. His legs grew weak and he collapsed. He slid down the wall onto the floor with a satisfied smile on his face. When he looked over at the door, still panting and trembling with the aftershocks of his violent climax, he saw Officer Addison’s face peering in at him from the barred window in his cell door. Joe stared back at her and took himself in hand once again, rubbing his cock back to full erection as he watched her watching him. This time, he didn’t imagine fucking her in her magnificent ass. His mind took him to dark places. He imagined ripping chunks from her gluteus maximus in a feeding frenzy. Jerking his head from side to side as he tore into her with his sharpened teeth. He stroked himself more vigorously and called out her name again.
“Addison.”
In minutes, he found himself nearing orgasm once more. He growled low in his throat and bit his lip. The blood dripped into his mouth and he probed the wound with his tongue. The taste of pennies and meat added to the fantasy. He saw the officer’s eyes widen. She covered her mouth and let out a tiny squeal as he ejaculated again, still staring into her eyes, still imagining gnawing her buttocks down to the coccyx and pelvic bone.
Twelve
Officer Charles Belton sat in the control booth watching the new CO ogle Joseph Miles while he beat off in his cell.
“This bitch is crazy,” he whispered, shaking his head. Despite his own disgust he felt his own manhood stiffening uncomfortably in his Fruit of the Looms. It only served to anger him more. He adjusted his erection so it was less noticeable and hissed in annoyance, as if he felt his own sexual organ had somehow betrayed him.
She has got to go, he thought. But ratting on a fellow officer wasn’t his style. There was a code and there was enough illegal shit going on between inmates and officers that breaking that code might start a chain reaction that landed them all in prison or on the unemployment lines at the least. Belton himself had been complicit in a few cockfights, including one that had ended in a fatality. Not to mention Joseph’s cannibalistic castration during the last cockfight.
Belton hit the zoom on the camera outside Joseph Miles’s cell and magnified Officer Addison times ten. He could now clearly see her right hand moving vigorously in the pocket of her uniform pants. She was masturbating too. Belton grimaced. He didn’t know women could even do that. He tried to imagine her reaching her clit through her pocket and acknowledged that it was possible before banishing the vision from his mind. Addison was cute, but she wasn’t exactly “hot.” He’d fuck her in a pinch, but she wouldn’t be his first choice. Still, he’d been working a lot of double-shifts lately because of recent layoffs due to the recession. Those late-night shifts got awfully boring. A blowjob every now and then would definitely help pass the time. If he could dig up enough dirt on Cindy Addison, he might be able to extort some occasional oral love from the crazy bitch.
It was almost time to deliver the mail. The normal control booth officer would be back from his break in minutes. Belton set the camera to its normal position and magnification right after Cindy Addison appeared to have finished and was now once again walking the tier. Belton thumbed through the piles of mail on the mail cart. Almost half of it was for Joseph Miles, and that was even after most of them had been censored and destroyed. Of these letters, 40 percent of them were from women who were turned on by the big cannibal’s crimes. Quite a few were marriage proposals. There were rants from religious folks offering to help him find the Lord. There were a few angry letters from people disgusted by what he’d done, and these were sent through virtually uncensored. Then there were letters of support and encouragement from teenagers who thought what he’d done was cool. The few of these letters they sent through to inmate number 177252 were so heavily censored they were almost unreadable. Belton wanted to throw them all in the trash.
What the fuck do these sick perverts see in that murdering piece of shit?
Belton was sick of everyone treating this freak like some kind of celebrity.
This perverted freak needs to be taken down a peg. I think it’s time for another cockfight.
Thirteen
“I want you to tell me what you think of this.” Professor Locke slipped the DVD into his laptop and after a few moments booting up, the screen filled with the image of Joseph Miles doing pushups. He was completely naked. Every muscle was clearly defined through skin as thin as parchment. His percentage of subcutaneous fat was in the single digits. Professor Locke had to admit the man was an impressive physical specimen.
Watching the convicted serial murderer tirelessly pump out pushup after pushup was almost terrifying. The professor glanced down at his own withered and wrinkled body, his protruding stomach, skinny arms, hair that had turned from gray to white, his weakening eyesight and thickening eyeglass lenses. He would have no hope if the big convict ever attacked him, but so far Joseph Miles had never acted aggressively toward him. If anything, he’d been remarkably respectful, almost deferential.
He couldn’t imagine trying to fight off a beast like Joseph Miles. The idea of someone that powerful and relentless lunging for his throat made the professor shiver. Joseph Miles was a near perfect killing machine. The professor had watched countless hours of footage of the killer alone in his cell. Joseph spent most of the day either working out, masturbating, reading books and letters, or doing bizarre fighting movements in the air as if shadowboxing or fighting off an assault from some unseen attacker.
Professor Locke fast forwarded the DVD past the pushups and other calisthenics. He stopped at a scene of Joseph Miles striking out at the air in quick savage motions. “So what do you think? What’s he doing?”
“It’s definitely some type of fighting art, but it doesn’t look like a formal kata. He seems to be making it up as he goes along. It’s pretty good though. His instincts are amazing. Who is this guy?”
The professor had been watching the DVD for several days, trying to make sense of the violent pantomime that Joseph was doing in his cell. He watched Joseph punch, kick, elbow, and even bite at the air in a perplexing frenzy of movement. At first Professor Locke thought it was a martial arts kata of some sort. He didn’t know much about fighting, so he’d taken the video to an expert martial artist for his opinion.
Alex Martin was a former cage fighter and a black belt in Jiu-jitsu, Wu Shu, and Taekwondo with more than two dozen Muay Thai fights and twice as many cage fights, but Professor Locke had never heard of him. But when he’d asked around for an expert on diff
erent fighting styles, Alex Martin’s name was the one most mentioned. So
he’d sought the man out. He was not at all what the professor was expecting.
This expert fighter and professional badass stood barely more than five feet, five inches tall and weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds. His body was hard and lean, like a gymnast’s. Not at all what came to mind when the professor thought of a fighter. He was expecting someone who looked more like Joseph Miles.
“His name is Joseph Miles. He’s a convicted serial killer under my care at the state penitentiary.”
Alex Martin let out a long whistle, still staring at the screen as Joseph did some sort of dive roll before coming to his feet in a low crouch and lashing out again with his fingers curled into claws right at the height where a man’s crotch would have been.
“Too bad. I’d have loved to train a guy like that. I’d make him a champion in no time. Look at his speed and his reflexes. Wow. And how long was he doing pushups for? He must have done close to a thousand.”
“He does pushups for an hour every day in the morning and another hour at night. Three thousand pushups a day.”
“Holy shit. That’s amazing. And how long does he do this shadowboxing for?”
The professor frowned, disturbed by the man’s enthusiasm. “At least an hour. Sometimes longer.”
“What else does he do?”
“Crunches, squats, lunges, jump-squats, calf raises, pull-ups, and then he stretches and meditates for about half an hour. He’s got an entire routine. He spends about six to eight hours a day doing this in his cell.”
“Six to eight hours?” Alex Martin sighed again, still staring at the computer showing Joseph Miles destroying some imaginary foe with terrifying ferocity. “One thing you should know though. He’s using all killing blows.”
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