The Estranged

by JG Koratzanis

  Apparitions floated about the alleyway in splotches as the rumble of footfalls filled his ears and vibrated in his head. In and out of focus, in and out of depth, they were there.

  But where was there?

  Here?

  He couldn’t recall where he was or how he got—

  Where?

  The coagulated din of voices, muted and disjointed, hushed as someone, or something, rolled him onto his back. Trembling hands slipped in and out of pockets, above and under his leather jacket. The swirl of violaceous skies dispersed before it vanished before an eclipsing mass.

  He couldn’t tell, nor did he care. All he knew was that—

  This can’t be the end.

  He felt, or imagined, someone wipe the life-essence from his lips that oozed down his cheek before two fingers pressed deep into the side of his neck. The alleyway erupted into a swirl of stars and micro-galaxies as the echoes of panicked voices permeated through his detonating pulse, though his pulse weakened with each distancing beat. The compression atop his chest thundered. And he wished for the piston-like hands to grant him one more day.

  This cannot be the end.

  Light, without shape or mercy, smashed through his weary consciousness as gravity failed. He felt his body, or his spirit rise, drawn by some resolute, unnatural force that called him beyond his earthly threshold. Hope, it seemed, was still there.

  This wasn’t the end. Just as it wasn’t for Jackie. Right? He got another chance that night when Chase met him at the bank after Jackie finished his ten-hour Thursday shift.

  “You’re early,” Jackie said. Chase had been wandering along Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg, hoping Jackie might have finished work sooner.

  “There was nothing else going on, so I figured I’d hang out,” Chase said as Jackie waddled down the stairs. Chase noticed Jackie’s waistband expand over the years. He attributed it to the “munchies.” Jackie liked his weed. And he loved his Wendy’s just as much.

  Neither of them noticed the drunk driver swerve across the bicycle lane, hear the slam of the front passenger wheel hit the curb, nor feel the crush of bone in Jackie’s leg as the bumper pinned him against the granite steps of the bank. If it weren’t for Chase catching the careening vehicle out of the corner of his eye, the eye that stared at Jackie with awe and wonder, hope wouldn’t have been a possibility. Only the immutable certainty of death. A leg would heal, with the aid of pain medications, pins, and rods, but it healed nonetheless.

  Heal me, Chase pleaded, though his lips didn’t move, nor did his eyes flicker.

  This cannot be the end. Please. Just one more—

  The sickening snap of the tow-line of absolution filled his consciousness. He descended through the worthlessness of reality and splashed into a dark sea of madness. The light above, afar and aloof, diffused into a flat wash of fluorescent tubes ready to burn out as the whisper of voices sank into the distance.

  Color drained from his face as his heart rate waned. The world turned colder, darker as the paramedics battled to return stability to his erratic vitals. The clot of strident voices screamed through the ears of his body, through the void and finally into his descending spirit.

  Save me. Please!

  He wept, somehow, somewhere into the waxy nothingness of existence. A memory distorted by forgotten torment, fear, and painful disconnection, burst forth from his hell.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE MAVERICK

  Light eluded the interior of the car, though the streetlight above illuminated the sidewalk and apartment buildings of Dyker Heights. And Chase shivered.

  His body trembled under the thin receiving blanket two years too small for him. And a little past his third birthday, Chase had no way of telling if the late September chill seeped through the cracks of the rundown, 1973 Ford Maverick or if it was the dark sensation that coursed through his veins.

  Eyelids weighted with the weariness of a no-nap afternoon. And long past night-night time, he wasn’t allowed to sleep just yet. Daddy told him they were going for a ride in the vroom-vroom. And after, he will go night-nights.

  Daddy promised.

  Chase didn’t understand what that meant, but it reassured his young heart.

  That reassurance was gone now. Chase folded his arms around himself and he tucked the blanket under the collar of his MOMMY’s LITTLE HELLRAISER T-shirt. His head drooped and shot up. Eyes rolled as lids lost the battle to gravity.

  A mechanized roar, something he recognized from television, stole his attention. Evel Knievel, he pronounced it Evil-Kenny-Evil, was coming. A streamer of red light replaced a burst of white as the motorcycle whizzed by. Chase craned his neck as he watched it disappear into the night.

  Awe continued as the bike, no longer within sight, continued in its resounded hum beyond the towering, at least to him, apartment buildings in the distance.

  He wanted to be home. He wanted to go night-nights. And he wanted his mommy.

  But Mommy wasn’t home.

  Again.

  Mommy always had to go bye-byes. And every time she came home, Daddy would say something, and she would yell at Daddy. But he didn’t yell back. Mostly. Daddy sat in the small kitchen and chewed gum that wasn’t in his mouth and wiggled his fingers.

  A shadow skated across the brick apartment building and seized Chase’s oscillating vision. He scanned the street for the source he couldn’t find.

  “Daddy?” he said, turned in his seat and stared out the back window.

  A squeak terrified him, and he spun back around in a hurry. He watched a mother and father pushing a stroller up the sidewalk. In it, a young girl, old enough to be a toddler.

  Like me, he thought.

  “Hi, girl! Hi,” Chase shouted and waved. His baby teeth gleamed from the streetlights.

  The mother noticed and smiled as they continued. The father scowled and shook his head. The girl didn’t hear him. She already went night-nights.

  His eyes became heavy again. Night-nights was a good idea. He drifted off and dreamed of the girl in the stroller. The fair skin that glowed in the sodium streetlight and the mop of dark hair that bobbed with the soft breeze and not so straight path of the stroller seized a small part of his young heart. A small part that soothed him, and an innate sense that yearned for, and wanted to be friends.

  Chase bolted upright when he heard the sudden click of the trunk behind him.

  “Daddy,” he called out, and a grin slashed across his face. Daddy didn’t flinch as Chase stared through the small gap between the car and the opened trunk, and watched his father remove a large, red can with a long yellow spout.

  “Daddy,” he said again. His happiness melted as he watched Daddy slam the trunk and stomp away.

  “Daddy?” Chase’s brows shifted when Daddy poured the water from the red can, over the car. An unfamiliar odor seeped into the Maverick.

  Daddy threw it to the sidewalk. The steel clanged and bonged as it bounced around. Daddy huffed and puffed and stopped at the passenger door. Wiggling fingers curled into white-knuckled, palm-tearing fists. Daddy huffed and puffed again. His green and white flannel shirt bellowed with each breath, and there seemed to be, what Chase thought, red paint splashed all over it.

  “Daddy?” His voice cracked.

  Daddy opened the door and leaned in. Silently, except for his locomotive breath, he wrapped the seatbelt around Chase with one hand as he held a handkerchief to one eye with the other. That too dripped with red paint. A lot of it. It patted against the faux-leather upholstery like tapping fingers.

  “You have a boo-boo,” Chase said. Daddy didn’t answer. He considered Chase with his one eye.

  “Boo-boo, Daddy. Boo-boo,” Chase repeated and chewed the gum he never had.

  Daddy caressed his son’s cheek, kissed him, and made his tummy do a loop-dee-loop. The returning smile never made it to his lips as he saw that Daddy’s one eye was red and teary.

  “Don’t cry, Daddy,” Chase said as he felt a pang choke his heart
.

  Daddy coughed and honked and wheezed and sobbed. Snot burst from his nose and mixed with the red paint and bubbly spit from his shaking lips.

  “I love you, Chase,” he said.

  “Love you too, Daddy,” Chase replied.

  “I love you, Chase,” Daddy said again. Chase said nothing. His chest tightened, his fingers halted, and his jaw clenched. Daddy pushed a silver knob from atop the door and startled Chase.

  “This is for your own good,” Daddy wept and wiped his nose with his sleeve. A smear of red slashed across his mouth and cheek like an evil clown.

  “Mommy?” Chase said. Daddy snarled and withdrew the dripping handkerchief from his face.

  A gasp followed by a crackled scream jetted from Chase. Crimson gore filled the hole where Daddy’s eye should have been. It oozed down the side of his cheek with flecks of brilliant white bone and painted his face, neck, and shirt in ghastly shades of agony.

  Daddy narrowed his gaze. Blood squirted from the hole as his brow furrowed and his teeth gnashed. Spittle flew from the gaps as he growled.

  “You’ll see her real soon. I promise.”

  The tension behind Chase’s eyes and lungs burst forth.

  He coughed and honked and wheezed and sobbed. Legs kicked, his head shook, and arms swung as he battled against his unrelenting restraints.

  He wanted to go home. He wanted to go night-nights. And he wanted his mommy.

  Daddy slammed the door and stepped away. Shoulders slumped, and fists clenched as he stumbled towards the hood of the car.

  “Daddy? Daddy,” Chase called out as Daddy slammed his fists on the hood. The steel buckled under his might.

  “No more, Chase! I told you this is for your own good!”

  He turned around and sat on the car. Incoherent babble fell from his lips as his fingers struggled to pull a red and white box and a small, blue flipbook from his shirt pocket. Chase watched Daddy pull a stick from the box with his teeth. It shook like a twig in a storm.

  Red and blue lights glowed in the distance from the cross street. The colors painted the apartment buildings and the inside of the Maverick as they raced closer. They bathed Chase and his Daddy in washes of crimson and azure as the strobe pierced the darkness. A siren wailed, and a loud voice shouted from a speaker from one of the blue and white cars with all the fancy lights as they screeched to a halt in front of the Maverick.

  “One. Two. Three. Four,” Chase counted. Four policeman cars.

  Policemen flung their car doors open, leaped out, and asked so many questions. Words like, “arrest” and “multiple homicides” tried to find a definition.

  Chase huffed like a choo-choo train as his fingers twitched and his teeth chewed the gum he didn’t have so hard, he never realized it was his tongue.

  “I love you, Daddy,” he said.

  Daddy pretended not to hear him, but Chase noticed his head snap towards him before he looked away again. Just like the games they used to play right before night-nights.

  “You look away, and I hide,” Chase would say with a grin so wide, it nearly split his head open. Daddy would always smile and agree. He would slowly turn away and snap back to Chase, who failed to duck under his Donald Duck blankets fast enough.

  This was the same, but different. Daddy wasn’t supposed to stay looking away. He was supposed to turn around and find Chase and attack him as the Kissy-monster.

  There were no more kisses, no more games. There were only policemen. And Daddy.

  A policeman craned his neck sideways and locked onto Chase’s gaze. Chase smiled and waved.

  “Hi, policeman. Hi,” Chase said. Unaware or lucid, the timbre in Chase’s voice sounded more maniacal than congenial.

  “Kid in the car,” the policeman yelled and drew his gun like in the old Cowboy and Indian movies. The other policemen pointed their guns at Chase’s Daddy as well.

  “Get to the ground, now! On your knees! Hands behind your head,” the one policeman who spotted Chase, yelled.

  Daddy laughed, opened the blue flip book and ripped a piece off. Policemen stepped closer, aimed their pistols and ordered him to drop to his knees.

  Policemen shouldn’t yell at Daddy. Policemen only arrested the bad-man. Daddy wasn’t the bad-man. Right?

  “Daddy? I love you,” he said.

  Daddy brushed the small, torn piece of the flipbook and brought the flame to the white stick in his mouth.

  He tilted his head up, breathed in deep, held it, and blew out a thick waft of smoke which hung in the still night air like a photograph.

  “Daddy, no. You’re not the bad-man, Daddy.”

  Daddy looked back at Chase one last time, smiled and tossed the flaming match to the car. Chase’s face went slack.

  The whoosh of light blotted Chase’s vision as the gasoline ignited, and the interior of the car became an instant furnace. Petrified, he screamed for his Daddy, he watched him disappear on the other side of the flames as most of the policemen tackled him like footballers. Smoke jetted through the vents and rotted window gaskets as the fire swallowed the entire car.

  Chase coughed and honked and wheezed and sobbed. His lungs burned with each inhalation and he wanted to throw up with each exhalation. No matter how hard he rubbed, his eyes stung with searing heat.

  Flames leaped onto the pleather front seats as they gushed through the cracks and seams of the car. The windshield shattered and stayed intact from the plastic safety adhesion within.

  Chase yanked at the seatbelt that refused to unbuckle. Screams drew silent as the flames ripped at his pajama pants and cooked his flailing legs.

  He kicked and waved and choked and wheezed. Dwindled screams forced between gasps and fits tore at his throat. Smoke clouded all view of the outside world before his eyes rolled white.

  His head tingled, and his eyelids grew heavy again. Dense thuds of blunt steel against the glass and the rapid depression of the door handle button threatened his rapture. His arid tongue fell from his lips and he allowed his eyes to close as he pressed out a final tear.

  Glass exploded and glittered over Chase and struck him from his imminent slumber.

  Why? He would finally go night-nights, just like Daddy promised.

  Globs of black mucus hacked up as the fresh air challenged Chase’s swollen lungs. Through blurred eyes, he watched the black smog suck out through the window and a hand reached through.

  CHAPTER 2

  SPOFFORD

  I

  His consciousness jolted when the steel frame of the stretcher clanged against the bumper of the ambulance.

  Chase’s head rocked side to side as the blood from his lips splashed onto the obnoxiously white linens. The Velcro straps around his wrists and chest snagged against the paramedic’s jump seat. The chair spun and crashed back into the side of the gurney.

  Fireflies the size of pterodactyls burned in the back of his eyes as the penlights scanned across. The blues, whites, and yellows of a Van Gogh-like twirl in his mind ramped up along with the ceaseless questions and answers at varying RPM’s upon his warped turntable.

  Green elastic bands snapped around the back of his head and snarled his hair as the paramedic covered his nose and mouth with a soft plastic gasket. A finger slipped below the band and broke the knot of hair free. Chase gagged through his arid throat before the squeak of a lever and the hiss of releasing pressure forced its way into his weakened lungs.

  A hand struggled to rise from its constraints as he tried to speak. Sanguine fluid and expectoration spattered against the inside of the oxygen mask.

  “Fuck. Replace. I don’t want him choking on his own blood,” a Minnie Mouse voice said.

  Nickelodeon-like vision glimpsed at hands that undulated in quavered, sepia-toned progression. One paramedic removed the splattered mask as the other swapped it out with perfect syncopation. Echoed voices fought to clarify in his ears as he strained to listen to his would-be saviors.

  “Sir, can you tell me your name,” Chase heard w
ithin the tumultuous vortex of his mind.

  “Romano, Chase. Twenty-eight-years-old. No priors,” someone else said. Maybe male, maybe not. The turntable sped up to seventy-eight.

  “Think he’ll make it?” another Mickey Mouse voice, or the same one, said.

  He plummeted again as gravity sucked with a mighty force before he splashed into the cold, foul, tempestuous ocean of dissolution.

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  II

  The soot and exhaust stained façade of the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center towered over the Hunt’s Point neighborhood in nauseating shades of ash and fawn, as its exterior mirrored the trepidation of the interior. It was a place many called home. Whether it was because they drifted over the lines of societal reciprocity, or simply those who were unplanned, unwanted, the estranged children of New York City resided here until their sentences expired, legal age of adulthood turned up, or they were luckily accepted into the New York City Foster program.

  Lucky. Yeah, right.

  Chase had been tucked away there for less than two years. Twenty-two months of fear and pain that no child should ever endure. Especially one who didn’t deserve to be there. One his extended family refused to face.

  Chase knew he was going home, wherever that might have been, and he couldn’t wait. The comparative meetings with various families, though drawn out and confusing, was the only hope Chase held onto when he prayed.

  At last, from the dozen meetings, one family wanted him as their own.

  Didn’t they?

  Waiting had become a sickening habit over the last six months.