“Hey!” I yell. No one comes. “Hey! Is anybody here?” I know I’m in the Repair Shack, so someone has to be manning the desk in the next room.
“Awake, are we?” A voice from my right. Not too far away. A voice I know; the creator of Hell. The governor.
“My eyes. They hurt.”
“Samuel, I can’t even imagine,” Governor McIntyre says. He approaches. Stands next to my bed. Or at least his horribly blurry silhouette does. “You damn near poked your eyes out, my friend. The doc said the damage was extensive. Perforated corneas.”
My memory flashes back. Holy shit, I tried to blind myself. “Governor, they really hurt. Can you give me something for the pain?”
“I wish I could, Samuel. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, there is nothing I can do for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m the only one here.”
“Am I in the Repair Shack?”
“You are. Damn, Samuel, you did quite a number on yourself,” the governor says in a tone that almost sounds impressed. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“You never came back,” I yell. “You promised to help me, but you never came back.”
“Hey, Samuel, you realize I am the governor of Colorado, right? It’s not like I just get to hang out in the Zoo all the time. I actually have a pretty busy day job. But I’m here right now, aren’t I?”
“An L-two cut my fucking fingers off! Where were you then? Fuck, it hurt.”
“Yes, I heard things went a little crazy with that guy.”
“A little crazy? He removed body parts. I can’t take this shit anymore. I want out. Either you get me out, or I get me out.”
“Sorry, Samuel. You have no means of doing that.”
“I’ll starve myself to death.”
“Force-feeding. Works every time.”
“I’m not kidding, Governor! Get me the fuck out of here like you promised!”
“I cannot lie, Samuel, you intrigue me to no end. I’ve never met anyone quite like you. Truth be told, I’m totally fascinated by you.”
I have no response. I can only think about how bad I hurt.
“I really want to understand you. I want to understand the whys and the hows of you. I want to understand your need to have the power to decide who lives and who dies. And I want to know what would possess you to try to tear out your own eyes.”
“Quit trying to understand me so much, and instead try to get me out of here.”
“I am. But what I’m attempting doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve put the process in motion, contacting the people I need to contact and getting the ball rolling. I didn’t promise I’d have you out by the next day. You have to have some patience.”
“Patience?” I say. “Are you fucking kidding me? You have patience when you’re waiting in line to renew your driver’s license. When you’re buying your movie ticket. You don’t have patience in here. Not when you’re waiting for the next fucking knife blade to slice through you.”
“Yes, I suppose. But understand, I’m working on it, okay? Just a few more days. And quit trying to mutilate yourself. Why would you do the L-twos’ job for them?”
“You don’t get it, Governor. I want the fuck out. Right now.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll see what I can do,” he says. “Not to change the subject, but I haven’t given up on the theory that if I can truly understand how you think, how your mind works, I can watch for it. I can teach others what to look for. I can help all of mankind. I’ve developed quite a national platform, you know. This place is evidence of that. Maybe I can educate the general public on warning signs to watch for, kind of like finding a serial killer before the person becomes one.”
“None of you get it. I’m not a puzzle to figure out—I already told you that. You will never understand me, no matter how hard you try!” My outburst intensifies the pain.
“I’ll just have to keep trying, then.”
I hear footsteps. Someone else is entering my blurry world.
“Hello, Doctor,” the governor says.
“Governor McIntyre, how are you, sir?” A new voice accompanies the footsteps. A new blur moves next to the Jon blur.
“Better than our friend here.” Jon laughs. “Says he’s pretty sore.”
“CZ One-Zero-One-Three, are you hurting?” the doctor blur asks.
“Yes, I’m fucking hurting. My eyes are killing me.”
“Yeah, I imagine they are. In hindsight, not a very good idea, huh?” The doctor blur moves away.
I hear a cabinet door open, a pill bottle rattle. I turn my head, try to see, but the distance turns everything into one giant blur. The door clicks closed. A moment later, the doctor blur moves back to my bed, slides a hand under my head and lifts. “Open your mouth.”
I do as I’m told. Two pills hit my battered tongue. A paper cup is held to my lips. I take a drink and start coughing. Pain roars through my head.
Time to Think
Someone sneezes. The sneeze seems far away, maybe from a room at the end of a long hallway. I hear a second sneeze and realize it’s perhaps only in the next room.
“Bless you,” a voice says.
“Thanks.” It’s the governor’s voice that answers.
I try to open my eyes. Pain accompanies the act. Shit, is it going to be like this every time? Slowly, my eyelids lift and the blur of the universe comes through. Still no details. Only a blurry haze.
“Can someone let me loose?”
Footsteps in the haze.
“Hey, Samuel, feeling any better?” Governor McIntyre’s voice. His blur stands beside me.
“Not much. Unless having cactuses shoved in your eyeballs is feeling better.”
“Is it cactuses? Or cacti?”
I turn toward the blur. “You kidding me?”
“Sorry. I’ve always struggled with that.” I hear the scraping of a chair being pulled up. “How long do you think you’ve been in here?”
“In the Repair Shack?”
“No. In here, the Criminal Zoo. How long do you think you’ve been here?”
I think for a moment, trying to clear the fog from my mind. “I don’t know. The Criminal Zoo phase lasts a year, so it can’t be longer than that, even though it feels like it’s been ten years. But honestly, I’ve got to be going on maybe…ten or eleven months now? Which means my time should be almost up, right?”
The governor says nothing.
“I’m right, right?”
“Samuel, you thought you had the power to decide who suffers and who doesn’t,” he says, not acknowledging my question. “But now you are powerless, aren’t you?”
“Is my time almost up or not?”
“What did it feel like? What did it feel like when you believed you had the power to make decisions only God should make?”
“Tell me how much time I have left in here. Please.”
“You know it’s against the rules for me to talk about that, right?”
“You brought it up!” The bolt of pain blasting through my head tells me I shouldn’t have yelled. “Please just tell me.”
“When your year is up, you move on to become king of the hill in maximum-security lockup. Supposedly, they revere you Zoo exhibits. Respected as real badasses.”
I want to know how long I’ve been in the Zoo. But my head warns me not to yell again. I sigh. “I’m begging you, show some compassion. We don’t get much of that here. How much more time do I have?”
“I have a question for you,” the governor says. “What did you think was going to happen? Despite what you said, doing it to become Godlike and all, you murdered innocent people and left their mutilated bodies behind.”
“I told you why. We’ve had this discussion already.”
“I know. But if that’s so, then why aren’t your
Gods helping you now? Why do They leave you in here to suffer?”
“I don’t know. I wonder that too.” I let out a sigh, long and painful. “Perhaps I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“What?” His voice is closer, like he’s leaning over me.
“While in here, I’ve done more thinking than in all my life. I’ve been forced to examine my entire existence. Time to think can have a powerful effect on a guy.”
“Do tell.”
“What you do to us isn’t right, Governor. Not right at all.” I pause a beat. “Torture is the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And it has made me think. A lot. Torture is exactly what I did to people before I came here. I tortured them. And just as you have no right to torture us, I can now see I had no right to torture others.”
“I thought you were cleansing them,” the governor says.
“So did I. But after my time in the Zoo, I’m not so sure. If nothing else, this place will make you contemplate every action you’ve ever taken. Now I question my own actions. Was I really cleansing anybody? Or was I just mutilating them, like I get mutilated in here? It’s not right. No matter what the reason, mine or yours, it’s not right.”
“Wow,” the governor says. “I think we may have had a breakthrough.”
“In church, as a boy,” I say, “I learned a passage about Satan being disguised in sheep’s clothing and tricking righteous people into doing unrighteous things. Maybe this happened to me. But good or bad, I followed my convictions. And if anyone truly understands this, God does. And He knows I have suffered more than any man should. When I die, I will sit by His side because I have been punished in here…in your Hell.”
There is silence. The governor must be pondering my words.
“Governor, you are the only person who has treated me like a man in here. You have befriended me and I would never betray that. I will help you understand me. Please. I swear to you, while I have sinned against man, God knows the innocence in my heart. I thought I was doing what was right in the eternal sense.”
The governor sighs and then says, “Two and a half months.”
“Two and a half months, what? What’s two and a half months?”
“That’s how long you’ve been in here.”
His words hit me like a two-by-four across the back of my head. My heart freezes in my chest. “That’s impossible, Governor. That can’t be.” Stay calm. He must have added wrong.
“I’m sorry, Samuel, I really am. I’m sure it seems like a lot longer, but you still have over nine months to go.”
“No. No. No!” I shake my head. My reality is bending, time grinding to a stop.
“I really am sorry,” the governor repeats.
“Governor, I can’t do it,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t take it anymore. Not nine months, not nine days. Not nine fucking hours. You offered to help. Will you still help me? Please, Governor, please get me out of here.”
The governor grabs me around my left forearm. “Samuel, listen for a second. I’ve contacted someone who can help you.”
“Who?”
“I’m not going to say just yet. Let me keep working on it.”
“Please. Whoever it is, get him in here.”
“Samuel, be completely honest. No more lies. Have you really learned your lesson?”
“Yes! I swear to God I’ll never hurt anyone again. There’s no way I’d ever do anything to end up back in here. I swear.”
The governor doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Governor, please, I’m begging you.”
“You know what, my friend, call me crazy, but I believe you. You’d have to be more than just a little insane to want to come back here. Maybe you could be my ultimate success story. Maybe we can show the world that your kind can be rehabilitated after all. You could validate everything I’ve fought for with this place.”
“I will preach against the evils of my ways until my last breath.”
The governor goes silent again.
“Governor?”
“You know, I stood before Congress, faced every one of those prissy stuffed shirts, and I told them that only with this kind of punishment could we reach those who are hardwired to kill. I mean truly get through to them. And now, you have proven me right. You know you’ll never know freedom again, right? You’re headed to life in prison from here.”
“I know. But in prison, I will get to stand outside. Feel the sun’s warmth again. Feel the wind against my skin. Feel a drop of rain. Hear birds singing. Have interactions with other people that aren’t simply about my pain, my suffering. I will become a human being again.”
“Yeah, that’s true. You’ll be an inmate, not an exhibit. You will return to the human race.” The governor pauses. “In the end, though, when you return to dust, the final judgment can come only from our maker. Whether you have earned an eternity in God’s presence or you spend it in Hell will not be decided in this life, but in the next.”
“Then why didn’t you leave it up to God to judge us? Why create this place?”
“Because while we are on this planet, we need to be protected from those who prey upon us.” Governor McIntyre sighs. “Samuel, nobody should have to experience what I went through. When I lost my wife, my heart was ripped from my chest.”
“So what exactly did happen to her?” I ask.
Stunning Revelation
“Oh, Samuel, if only you could’ve seen her. She was my day, my night. She was my everything.” The governor’s voice reveals that he’s smiling. A smile I cannot see in the blur. “She was my fantasy. She was my reality. She was a shining light, a warmth that comforted everyone.”
“What did she look like?”
“She was absolutely beautiful. Long, shimmering golden-brown hair. Brilliant green eyes. I’m not kidding, either. They were radiant. Sparkled like polished emeralds. Her name was Allison. I called her Allie.”
Why did a jolt of familiarity shoot through my whole body, and why is my skin tingling?
“She’d been visiting her parents. They were the last people to see her alive. She was driving home, her car broke down, and then she vanished.”
“Where did this happen?” My heart is pounding and my ears are ringing.
“The Four Corners area of New Mexico. Just outside of a little town called Shiprock.”
Jesus Christ! No way!
“She was stranded on the side of the road and had just called me. She was about to tell me where she was when I heard screeching tires and her voice screaming. It was a horrifying scream, made me sick just hearing it. To this day, I lie in bed at night and hear that scream. Every damn night, that’s the last thing I hear before I fall asleep. That scream will haunt me until I die.”
I am dizzy from this stunning revelation. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Oh, it’s been several years now. But I remember that scream like it was this morning.”
This can’t be! “Maybe she just ran away.” The feebleness of this statement rattles through my brain.
“No,” the governor says. “Someone definitely took her. Her car was found. The license plates had been removed, the VIN number had been scratched out, her insurance and registration papers were gone, and her cell phone was stomped to pieces.”
I have no idea what to say. Hell, I can barely breathe.
“I called the Colorado highway patrol first, because I didn’t know how close to home she was. There were no reports of any accidents, so I called New Mexico. They didn’t have any reports for that area, either. But both states said they would be on the lookout for the car I described. An hour later, I received the phone call that ruined my life.”
“What’d they find?”
“Just what I told you. Her car. But there were splotches of blood at the scene, on the side of
the road. There were tire tracks. Imprints were taken, but nothing ever came of it.”
“Any fingerprints on her car?”
“Oh, sure there were—a lot of them. Mine, hers, her parents’, my parents’, our kids’, the mechanic’s. Yes, fingerprints everywhere. But the glove box—that area had been wiped completely clean.”
“So you never found out what happened?”
“Oh, I know what happened. Someone hit her, killed her, and then covered their tracks. I just don’t know who. For a long time, whenever the phone rang, I prayed it would be someone with information about Allie. Someone who knew something about what happened that day. I held onto hope for years.”
An odd thought strikes me. I feel cheated that I didn’t get to see her eyes, if they were really as beautiful as the governor says. “That had to have been pretty hard.”
“My kids asked me twenty times a day, every damn day, when their mom was coming home. What was I supposed to tell them?” The governor’s words now sound as if tears have washed away the smile. “After a year of looking for her, even without a body, I had to accept the reality of it all. I finally told the kids their mom was in Heaven. We had a funeral, and we tried to begin the healing. But nothing took the pain away. Nothing even came close, until I came up with this place.”
“Her body was never found?”
“If there are any remains, with modern-day DNA technology, eventually something will turn up. But here’s the problem…did you know twenty-three hundred people in the United States are reported missing every single day?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s about nine hundred thousand Americans per year. The system is overloaded with data. And even if her remains are found, almost five thousand unidentified bodies are discovered every year. The last time I checked, there was a backlog of almost forty thousand bodies in various states of decomposition, waiting to be identified.”
I shake my head. “I’m so sorry, Governor. But this just confirms what I’m telling you. The Criminal Zoo is your way of trying to escape your pain and your frustration. Allie was never found. Her killer was never found. So all the suffering that goes on in here is just so you can feel better. That’s really terrible.”
Criminal Zoo Page 24