Liquid Fire

by Stuart, Matt

  Chapter 19 – Sam

  The red Chrysler 300 almost bottomed out as it took the speed bump at a forty five degree angle. Our driver was pretty pissed about having to drag his prized car up to the Mount Gravatt winery. My parents had paid a small fortune to get me this car to drive us there, but other than that it was everything I could have hoped for in a graduation car.

  Our school held both events at the same time, probably to keep costs low. It saved us time as well and it was the very last thing on our school calendar. By any standards the event was elaborate, and it all started in how you got there. Mandy was beside me in the car, in a long flowing blue dress, that had frills around the shoulder straps. Bret sat opposite us, hand in hand with his date, Brittany, who wore some horrible yellow looking thing.

  We stepped out at the front gate of the winery, greeted by all the students already there as well as most of our teachers and parents. A photographer hurriedly snapped away at us and I hooked Mandy closer, bringing her in for a kiss. We quickly hurried down the stairs and ended up in front of the huge cellar doors where everyone was gathering and socializing.

  At five thirty the parents and guests all went home, leaving just the students alone with the teachers who ushered us into the function facility once all the photos had been taken. The winery was beautiful, with the wine yards tracing their way down the slopes overlooking the sparkling central district of Brisbane city and surrounds.

  Inside, the function center was fully decorated. A huge red and green banner was hung overhead with the words “Congratulations class of 2013.” Long tables were placed in rows throughout the back of the large hall like islands in the middle of the ocean. We’d been assigned table numbers and who’d we sit with. I was at a table mostly comprised of the team and our guests. Each member wore his medal proudly around their neck each time the photographer swung past to get a happy snap of us.

  The main course was superb, filled with lamb and roast vegetables, definitely a good feast for the last night of being a school student. Everyone dug into their various dishes and had a wonderful time. I ate slower than usual not wanting to get any food on my expensive suit. The DJ was pumping his tunes a little too loudly, so we had to yell in order to be heard.

  The two dozen or so teachers who had bought tickets had their own tables in a separate room, offset from the main area. Alexis was there in a black silk piece, something far more elaborate than most of the dresses the girls had on. I felt hungry for her once again, but then remembered about Bret and what he was doing. My hunger subsided and turned again to anger.

  Dinner was done and out of the way, and we continued to socialize while a podium was set up for the speakers to hand out the special rewards that were always given at the end of the year. So far I had my name down for the two biggest awards. Sportsman of the Year and Dux of the School. I didn’t pay much attention until those two awards were announced. Neither of them was me, however Bret won Sportsman of the Year.

  My group waited with a collective breath, all of them looking at me. Coach Graves was the next person up to announce the MVP award. “Now most of you know me, but for those of you who don’t I’m Coach Graves and I take care of our boys in the open AFL team.” The team roared in approval. “We won the premiership this year and the overall MVP is from that team. He is your Sportsman of the Year. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause to Bret Jones! Your sports MVP!”

  Bret was called out to a loud roar from our peers. He strode up to the podium, shook the hand of Coach Graves, had his photo taken with the trophy and returned to his seat. I could see his name engraved on the golden plate. It should have been mine.

  “Bullshit!” I shouted.

  Everybody heard me clearly since nobody had cheered loud enough for Bret to receive his second award in a row. Coach Graves looked at me puzzled as if to say what the fuck man?

  “Do you have an objection, Mr. Fanning?” he asked.

  “No, Coach, no objection at all. I’m sorry.”

  After that the awards wrapped up pretty quickly and the podium was cleared. A disco ball was lowered and on came the dance lights. I remained at the table for a few minutes while everyone split off to start dancing or doing their own thing. I made for the balcony, using the corridor down the side. I turned the corner and saw Bret disappearing into the toilet, clearly being led by someone. I followed.

  The door closed silently behind me and I turned to look at what I was faced with. I could hear Alexis in a cubicle laughing at Bret who was clearly doing something to make her squirm. “Oh, Bret, fuck stop it!” I growled inside knowing she used to be like that with me.

  Luckily, they were in the end cubicle, so I snuck into the first one, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I selected the microphone app and placed it on the paper holder. If Bret had won Alexis I was going to make sure I had proof that they had something illegal going on. She would lose her job, Bret would probably lose anything he’d done in his school career, and meanwhile there was no evidence to convict me of any wrong doing with Alexis.

  Sitting on the toilet seat with my feet raised up around me was painful enough, and even more so listening to Alexis give Bret everything he wanted. This was the women I’d trusted to move in with, but with what I had seen last night, I would be changing those arrangements. Alexis was climbing faster than I expected, and I could only imagine what Bret did to her that I couldn’t do.

  “Christ, Alexis,” I heard Bret grunt. “Liquid fire.”

  Liquid fire? That’s what Kate used to say to me! Parsons had been right; Bret had strangled Kate on her bed. Unknown to Alexis and Bret, I opened my cubicle and walked down to theirs. Adrenaline was filling me to the brim, I was ready to kill the man who had taken Kate from me and forced me into this whole situation. The red engaged word on the lock showed but I didn’t care. I was ready to engage.

  I heard a pause from inside the cubicle and Alexis’s voice. “Bret, I think there’s someone there.”

  Taking a step back I launched my foot straight for the door. It buckled once before collapsing after the second kick. Before me stood Alexis and Bret half naked and in my fury I grabbed out for Bret, pulling him through the broken door. Alexis screamed in terror.

  “Did you kill Kate?” I roared at him, punching him square in the jaw. My knuckles buckled under the strength of the blow which busted Bret open. Blood started to trickle out of his mouth. “Huh, come on, you cunt! Answer me!” I shook him violently.

  Bret came to and started swinging landing one punch in my gut and another grazed off my ear. He followed up with another closed fist to my jaw that sent my head rattling. I collapsed onto the tiled floor. Bret stood over me, pants around his ankles, cock still dripping with cum that he was yet to put in Alexis. He kicked them off. There was blood on his chest now and I swore my head had been busted open as well.

  “I didn’t kill her, but I know who did,” he said through the blood.

  “Did you tell Parsons?”

  “No he didn’t need to know,” replied Bret. “Neither do you.” He followed up stomping me in the gut, causing me to buck under him. I grabbed his other leg and lashed out hard with mine, connecting with the knee cap. Bret dropped to his other leg screaming, “Fuck!” I regained my feet just as he regained his. I could feel blood pouring down my neck into my now filthy suit. We faced each other one final time.

  “This is it you know,” I said. “You’re dead to me.”

  Bret limped forward; my kick must have done more damage to him than I thought. The back of my head was pounding, like someone had stuck a jackhammer into it, and I could barely make out Bret’s bloodied figure. I grabbed for him wildly, finding the mark. My index and middle fingers had penetrated some sort of solid liquid and I saw where my hand was. The two fingers were buried inside Bret’s eyes, making him scream like he was on fire, clawing at my arm.

  With what strength I could muster I tossed him away from me, ripping out one eyeball that had gotten caught on my nail. He s
mashed into the mirror over the basin, and then collapsed onto one of the stainless steel taps in a bloody, mutilated mess, never to rise again.

  All I could hear in my head was Alexis screaming even louder, the sounds hammering away at my battered eardrums. I felt myself falling backwards and all of a sudden I saw nothing but black.

  Chapter 20 – Sam

  I woke up in a hospital bed with one large, sudden gust of air flowing straight to my lungs. I looked outside but couldn’t. The windows were barred and had heavy curtains draped over the outside of them. A heart monitoring machine was beside me, beeping at regular intervals. My hands were wired up to it. I tried moving them but nothing would happen. They were numb like the rest of my body, and I’d clearly been pumped with morphine.

  A nurse attended to me within fifteen minutes. She was an older stout woman, probably in her fifties and she’d been doing this for a long time. I was pretty happy with how she handled me, making sure I was ok, and then started trying to get some feeling back into my body. The doctor that had worked through my surgery told me I was lucky to be alive.

  I had several skull fractures in the back of my head thanks to the bathroom tiles and my knuckles were shattered, courtesy of Bret. I’d been in a coma for two weeks. He also informed me that I was inside the new and improved Brisbane CBD prison which was now being used to reduce numbers in the Wacol Prison as well. No wonder why I couldn’t see outside, we were underground. I was being transferred to Wacol tomorrow, as this was the place reserved for the most elite of prisoners.

  The transit to Wacol was peaceful enough inside the armored van, with one guard who manacled me to a steel bar. There was no way I could think about getting free. He wasn’t really talkative, and I couldn’t get squat out of him. Officer Parsons was waiting for us as we got out of the van.

  “Told you not to go down this path, Sam,” he said sadly.

  “I don’t regret it Parsons. He’d stolen two women I loved away from me, and he could go around pretending to be my best mate at the same time. I walked in on him fucking Alexis and I have the audio on my phone. She’s guilty as well!” I protested.

  “Sam, the best I can do is get you out of here in five years. The jury already decided quickly that you’ve got a sixteen year sentence. Someone in there decided to move the enquiry along,” said Parsons.

  “But how did they do it so quickly? These things take months,” I said shocked at the quickness of how I had been sentenced. “Bret was in on the plan to kill Kate!” I shouted at the officer.

  “You committed a murder with one witness who saw you committing it, with another half dozen finding you injured on the floor beside the body. The odds are stacked against you. I’m sorry, son,” said Parsons.

  “But Parsons, the killer of both Casey and Kate is still out there somewhere! I can help you find them! You heard my phone audio!”

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” he repeated.

  The cold iron fence wrapped around me, and I was now in its grip for a very long time with no escape. Wacol was a haven for Queensland’s criminals and they were all older and much stronger than me. My guard escorted me through the mess hall and I caught the leering eyes of many other inmates.

  “Hey look it’s the boy with the wonder cock! I wonder if he takes it as well,” called out one maniac with half of his teeth missing, grabbing his crotch. His inmate uniform was nothing more than rags.

  “I’ve already killed a man with my bare hands, I can do it again,” I shouted at him.

  “Try me then, son. You look like you just crawled out of your mother’s womb. I’ll fuck your asshole shut before you lay a hand on me!”

  His friends all laughed at the supposed joke and I hurried past them, under the watchful eye of the guards stationed through the hall. My guard took me further back into the prison until he stopped outside a small cell.

  “This is solitary confinement. You’ll stay in here at all times except to be allowed into the yard and during visitor time. It’s for your protection only; you saw how they looked at you out there. You’ll shower at dusk each day and your meals will be brought to you. I wish you luck inmate six two four three two,” said the guard reading the badge that was stitched into my shirt.

  A couple of weeks passed, and I sat in my cell most of the time, doing nothing except replying Bret’s beating over and over in my head. I thought back over the last few months of my life since Kate died, trying to work out who killed her. If Parsons was working for me on the outside to free me sooner the first thing I would do was to claim my vengeance.

  My parents had set up a saving fund for me, which they kept depositing money into on a weekly basis, hopefully able to support me when I got released. I’d spoken to them several times on the phone, explaining everything I could.

  Parsons visited on a weekly basis, keeping me updated with the investigation into all three deaths, but as usual there were no leads, except those that led back to me. Often Parsons would question me for fresh information but there was nothing more I could give him. All I thought about was the lives that had been lost, all because of me.

  I looked up from my scribble book that I’d looted while doing laundry duty to see a guard waiting for me in his navy blue uniform. He looked down at me before speaking.

  “Prisoner six two four three two, you have a visitor.”

  It couldn’t be Parsons since he had seen me yesterday and, my parents only came here every second weekend. I leapt out of bed, faster than I had moved in weeks and eagerly followed the guard to what I called the phone room. He put me in the middle seat, and looking up and down on the other side of the glass panel, I could see nobody of interest to me, until the door at the far side opened.

  Alexis strode in clad in a dress and hat that made her look like she’d been at the races. She could have been for all I knew; I’d long lost track of what day it was. Behind her was a tall well muscled man, who looked very well groomed, dressed in a grey suit. They walked together towards me and Alexis sat down opposite me behind the glass, crossed her legs, smiling wickedly at me. The guy was still a mystery to me; I’d never seen his face before nor did he give any indication of who he was.

  I saw the smile on Alexis’s face as she watched me for a minute, like a caged animal in a zoo. That smile told me she was planning something and that something told me this guy wasn’t a relative of any kind. Alexis gestured for the phone and picked her own up, holding it to her ear waiting for me to speak.

  “Hello, Alexis,” I said sternly.

  “Hello, Sam. This is my husband, Nathan.”

  “A husband, Alexis? You told me he was dead.”

  “Watch your tone,” growled Nathan.

  “What else have you lied to me about?” I growled at Alexis.

  “Oh sweet, Sam, you have no idea.”

  Chapter 20.5 – Unknown

  I sat at my computer, alone in the dark room watching the sorry sack that was Sam Fanning. The CCTV I had tapped into allow me to follow his every movement. He stooped around the prison like a lost soul. With how far he had fallen I almost pitied him. First he had lost Kate, then Casey. Bret followed, taken by Sam’s hands. A cruel but well deserved fate for that cheater. He had promised himself to me before and I was glad that he was dead.

  I grew bored watching Sam. Prison was not an exciting place to be and I could only imagine how badly I wanted to get my hands on him. Everything was ready for him, and I would be able to wait depending on how long his sentence was. I cracked open my bottle of soy milk and took a sip as I watched Sam interact with a guard. He passed without incident.

  A buzz rang out from beside me. My phone lit up, indicating a text message had come through.

  Unknown Number: Receive call in five minutes.

  I held my phone until it vibrated in my hand. Smashing the answer button without checking the caller ID I put it up to my ear.

  “Is it done?” I asked.

  “As you instructed,” answered the female voice that could only be Alexis
. She was nothing but a pawn in my deception and easily disposal.

  “What does he know?” I demanded.

  “Nothing more than exactly what you told me to say,” replied Alexis.

  “Good, we’ll be in touch.”