Joe Victim

by Paul Cleave

  “No it won’t, Joe. I can help you.”

  “You can’t help Joe in here,” I tell her. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

  It’s Saturday morning. It was a rough night sleeping, as the side of my face hurt like hell. Last night before we were all put back into our cells Caleb Cole came and saw me. He told me he’d decided that he’d rather kill me than take the money. He didn’t see any reason in waiting. After all, prison was all about waiting, and all you had to break the tedium was doing, so doing was more entertaining than waiting. He came at me and his first punch got me in the stomach, and his next punch got me in the face. The problem is I’m a lover, not a fighter, and don’t know how to defend myself. Before he could get a third shot in, Adam came in and Caleb stopped. When he asked Cole what was going on, Cole said he’d seen me fall and was just trying to help. He was shaking his hands afterward, the punches he gave hurting him just as much as me.

  Is that what happened, Middleton? Adam had asked.

  Things were a little blurry. I had nodded, said yes, that’s exactly what it was, and Adam had been satisfied. He wasn’t going to go home and be kept awake by any kind of guilt. I was just lucky he’d at least even put a stop to it. No doubt that’s because he can’t force-feed me whatever sandwich creation he’s coming up with next if I’m dead.

  “Joe, if somebody is threatening you, you need to tell me,” Ali says.

  “Why? Do you think the guards are going to care?”

  “Joe-”

  “Please, can we just talk about what we need to talk about for the trial? The rest will work itself out.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Please,” I tell her.

  “Okay, Joe, if that’s what you want.”

  My psychiatrist-and I’ve decided to settle on Ali because it’s a shorter name-has dressed a little more casually for the weekend. She’s wearing tight jeans that give me bad thoughts. A buttoned shirt that also gives me bad thoughts. Maybe I’m just a bad-thoughts kind of guy.

  “When did your auntie stop abusing you?”

  “We’re back to that, are we?”

  “Just answer the question, Joe.”

  “I told you already,” I say. “It was close to two years.”

  “I mean, when did she stop. What time of the year? Do you remember?”

  I’m not sure why it matters. I close my eyes and picture it. Now I’m a different kind of bad-thoughts kind of guy. School days were coming to an end, not just for the year, but for me they were ending forever. I had an unknown future, a world of unemployment was a strong possibility. I had never known what I wanted to do and, truth be told, I still don’t know. Maybe open a pet store. It was a scary time. Throughout the previous six months of school, guidance counselors had been trying to help us all figure out what paths to take, and being a grade-A serial killer wasn’t an option. Hell, back then I didn’t even know that’s what I wanted to be. Not really.

  “It was near the end of my final year at school,” I tell her. “About a month short-so around November I guess.”

  “You were eighteen?”

  “Seventeen. My birthday is in December. The tenth, actually,” I say, and I had to spend my thirty-second birthday in jail, but my thirty-third will be spent elsewhere. “You know what the tenth of December is?”

  She shakes her head.

  “It’s Human Rights Day,” I tell her, then smile. “Kind of ironic for a guy who the public’s trying to kill.”

  “There are people who would see it as being ironic for other reasons,” she says.

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “A serial killer being born on Human Rights Day, who believes nobody but himself is due any rights.”

  “It’s not like that,” I tell her. “I have no-”

  “Memory,” she finishes for me. “Therefore you can’t remember what you were thinking in those moments. Yes, I get it. However, human rights are what this entire debate is all about. The people for the death penalty would say they want their rights heard, that it’s the right of the victims to have their killers given the same sentences as they themselves were given. Have you thought about it from that point of view?”

  I’m not sure if I have and, hearing what she’s saying, I’m not so sure I want to give it any thought. Why should I care? “No.”

  “I think you should. I think you might find it insightful.”

  “Okay,” I say, and sure, I’ll get right on it.

  “Tell me about the first time you killed somebody,” she says.

  At first I think I’ve misheard her. I’m not expecting the question, so it takes an extra couple of seconds to realize she hasn’t said Tell me about the first time you kissed anybody, which would have been my auntie, and I hope the pause makes me look like I’m actually trying to remember. Which I can. But that’s not what I tell her. “I don’t. . I don’t remember.”

  “So you’ve been saying. So how about you tell me about the first time you suspected that you’d hurt somebody.”

  “Well, that would be when the police came and arrested me.”

  She slowly nods. Looks down at her hands. Makes a note. “So you’re telling me you never woke up covered in blood? See, the problem we’re facing here, Joe,” she says, and I like the way she thinks we’re facing the problem and not just me, it makes me feel like I’m part of a team, “is that if you don’t remember any of it, why were you carrying a gun? Why did you try to end your life when the police surrounded you?”

  “Well, that’s tricky,” I tell her, “and also a good point,” I say, and I make out I haven’t heard her ask this already. “I mean, I remember the police coming and getting me, and I know I got hurt pretty bad, but I don’t remember trying to shoot myself, and I certainly don’t remember ever owning a gun.”

  “The gun belonged to Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun.”

  “So I’ve been told. I just don’t remember any of it.”

  “Okay, Joe,” she says. “You want to stick with that story?”

  It’s the story I’ve been sticking with, and changing it now would make me look like an idiot. “Yes.”

  She nods. She accepts my story. Then she stands up. “We’re done here, Joe,” she says, and she knocks on the door and I know all I have to do is say the right thing and she’ll stay.

  “There was one time when-”

  She puts her hands out to stop me. “I don’t want to hear something you’re making up on the spot, Joe. But I’ll come back tomorrow. And that will be your final chance.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I’ve been back in my cell, lying down, staring at the door, waiting for Caleb Cole to show up, trying to decide what I’m going to do when he does. The timing of it all is pretty unlucky, but maybe that’s just how I roll. I may be a bad-thoughts kind of guy, but also an unlucky kind of guy too-my surroundings are proof of that. All I have to do is make it through to this evening. That’s all. Then I’m out of here. Caleb Cole, the prison guards, Santa Suit Kenny, they can all go to Hell.

  I don’t have anything to defend myself with. I’m not sure whether or not I’d be safer in the common area or whether that would just make it harder for the guards to get to me if I start screaming. Every time I hear footsteps I tense up.

  “You missed shower time,” Adam says, stepping into my cell. I relax when it’s him and not Cole.

  “I don’t need a shower.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he says. “You stink. And I hear you’re going on some kind of field trip later on today, and the people you’re going with don’t want you stinking up their car.”

  He leads me out of my cell. My neighbors are sitting in groups or pairs shooting the breeze, only a few of them are alone. I can’t see Cole and figure he must be in his cell, probably filing down a toothbrush. Adam leads me down to the showers. He opens the door and there’s nobody else in there. The door closes behind me, then it’s just him and me and a really bad feeling. I turn to face him.

 
“You heard the saying that life is a shit sandwich?” he asks me.

  I don’t answer him.

  He nods toward a bench where there are towels folded and half-used cakes of soap. Sitting on the closest towel is a paper bag. “Pick it up,” he says.

  I back away from the bag. He reaches out and grabs my collar and pulls me forward so my face is only a few inches from his and I can smell onion on his breath.

  “You owe me, Middleton,” he says. “Remember? For the phone call. This was the deal.”

  “I’m not playing.”

  He lets go and pushes me back slightly. Then he reaches out with his left hand and points at the wall. I turn my head to see what he’s looking at, then suddenly his other fist connects with my stomach. I double over, my breath knocked out of me, then he pushes me onto the floor where there are still a few footstep-sized puddles of water from the previous group who cleaned up here. I end up sitting on my ass and the water soaks into my jumpsuit and underwear.

  “It’s just you and me in here, Middleton,” he says. “But tonight when you get back, you’re not going to have time to have a shower with your normal group. So we’ll have to arrange something else. You can be with some of the other inmates. It’ll be just like I told you yesterday. A few of them will think you’re their type. I’ve already had one guy offer me a thousand bucks if I could sneak him in here to bust your teeth out and fuck you in the mouth. Thing is, Middleton, there’s a big-screen TV that I’ve been eyeing up and a thousand bucks would go a long way to getting me that. So I’m tempted. Now, what you need to realize is that the only thing between me and that TV, and between you and that inmate, is you eating that sandwich. You get me?”

  I get my breath back. I get up onto my feet and pull the wet part of my jumpsuit away from my skin. Adam’s muscles are tightly coiled. There’s something glinting in his eyes, the same kind of something others may have seen in mine in their last moments. He’s enjoying this.

  “I’m not kidding,” he says, and he shoves me against the wall and I don’t fight back because I don’t know how. “Eat the fucking sandwich,” he says.

  “No,” I say, because I won’t be here tonight. Melissa will be getting me out of here. Whatever plans Adam has for me won’t be happening. Unless Melissa doesn’t get me out of here. But Positive Joe doesn’t think that way.

  He punches me in the stomach again, this time much harder. Then he pushes me onto the floor, back into the footstep puddles. I look up at him. The veins in his arms are sticking out. He reaches down and pulls me up and shoves me against the wall. “I can keep doing this all day, Joe,” he says. “And your shower buddies will keep doing you all night. Now eat the fucking sandwich,” he says, and pushes the bag into my chest.

  “No,” I tell him again.

  The shower door opens. Another guard comes in. “What the hell is going on here?” he asks, and it turns out to be Glen, Glen who has always given me such a hard time, but right now he’s my salvation. He takes one look at Adam, then at me, then back at Adam, and closes the door behind him.

  Adam doesn’t answer.

  “He’s trying to-” I say.

  “Shut up, Middleton,” he says. “Adam, what the hell?”

  “It’s not how it looks,” Adam says.

  “Yeah? You sure about that?” he says, looking as mad as hell, so mad the veins in his arms are standing out more than the veins in Adam’s arms. “It looks like you started without me.”

  “I haven’t,” Adam says. “Look, it’s still here,” he says, and holds up the paper bag to eye level. “He hasn’t taken a bite yet.”

  I don’t understand what’s going on.

  Glen takes the bag off him. He unfolds the top of it, and inside is a smaller plastic bag that’s sealed, and inside that plastic bag is a sandwich. He peels the plastic bag open and the smell that comes out is potent.

  “Okay,” Glen says. “I didn’t mean to overreact. I just don’t want to miss this.”

  “I was just laying down some ground rules,” Adam says.

  I stare at the sandwich. Both men have turned their heads away from it. I turn my head away from it too. I stare over at the direction of the showers, where later tonight I’ll have to deal with a bunch of assholes trying to invade mine. It reminds me of that saying about nine out of ten people enjoying gang rape.

  “Come on, Middleton, eat the sandwich or we’ll put you in a cell tonight where guys are going to knock your teeth out and make you eat a whole lot more,” Glen says, giving me similar dialogue to his buddy. “You tell him we’ll make him shower in general population?” he asks Adam, “Where he’s going to have a lot of guys trying to populate his-”

  “Enough,” I say. “Okay? I get the point. Enough already.”

  Even if I wanted to eat the sandwich, there’s no way I could. The smell alone is enough to make me gag. Adam pushes me into the wall again and Glen stands in front of me holding the sandwich. He punches me in the stomach, but I can’t fall down because of Adam. Glen pushes the sandwich at my mouth. I have no choice. If I don’t eat it, they’re only going to make my life worse, and if Melissa isn’t waiting for me this evening, then I’m not going to make it through to tomorrow. And what can I do? Go to the warden? Fill out a complaint form? Even if the warden did believe me, even if Adam and Glen lost their job, what then? What of the other prison guards who know and like them? Life already feels like an endless Monday. If I don’t comply, it’s going to be an endless Monday of shit sandwiches. The pieces of bread are almost flat against each other, so at least there are no lumpy bits. There is some lettuce hanging out the side. And I can see the edges of some salami that looks like it passed its use-by date around the time disco phased out. The whole thing smells exactly the way he described it earlier when he asked if I’d heard that phrase about life, so I know the compound holding it all together may look like peanut butter, may have flecks of peanut in it, but will taste nothing like peanut butter.

  Glen pushes one hand against my forehead so the back of my head grinds hard against the tile wall. Then he digs his fingers into my cheeks to try and open my jaw. He punches me in the stomach again, and my mouth opens from the impact and his fingers dig my cheeks inward between my teeth so I can’t close my mouth.

  Adam brings the sandwich up to my face. It’s a putrid smell, the kind of smell I used to have to deal with back when I was a janitor, back when some drunk asshole in the holding tanks at the police station would shit all over the floor and I’d have to clean it up. Only it’s that smell times a hundred. It’s like they’ve used shit to bury the smell of something that died, the same way hospitals use disinfectant.

  Glen pinches my nose shut, and it helps, a little, and any help at this stage is a relief.

  The sandwich touches my lips. I feel the lettuce dangling from the edge of it on my chin. I feel the bread-it’s stale and firm and feels like it’s been lightly toasted, but it hasn’t been. Then that bread is on my tongue and scraping the roof of my mouth, and so far it’s okay, it’s okay because bread is all I can taste. The bread starts to get wet. Adam pushes more of it into my mouth, then Glen lets go of my cheeks and pushes my jaw upward and my teeth bite through the sandwich.

  My taste buds all head for the hills at the same time as flavors burst into my mouth, they run in the same direction, which pulls my tongue into the back of my throat and causes me to gag. Even with my nose pinched closed I can smell the sandwich again. Something in the back of my throat starts clicking and still the sandwich is being pushed deeper. I can’t breathe now. It’s chew or suffocate. They’re the two choices I have.

  So I chew.

  I picture my mom and her meat loaf and I try to imagine that’s what I’m eating, but my imagination simply isn’t good enough. What floods my mouth is dirty and foul and makes me wish I’d been quicker a year ago when I tried to shoot myself. I twist my head from side to side, but Glen keeps his hand pressed firmly on it, and as if to prove a point he punches me again in the stomach,
only this time lightly.

  I figure the best thing to do is chew the minimum amount of times and then swallow. So I do that, chewing even less than the required minimum, and when I try to swallow what happens is a giant wad of whatever the hell I’m eating gets lodged in my throat. I start to choke.

  “You’re not getting off that easy,” Glen says, and he spins me around, digs his hands beneath my chest, and pulls upward. The ball of sandwich comes up and hits the wall. He spins me back around again. “Smaller bites are the key, Middleton,” he says, and then we repeat the steps-the punching, the nose squeezing, the flooding of flavors-only this time I chew for longer and my second bite goes down, and then there’s a third. I keep my tongue pressed down and I chew as best as I can without trying to taste anything, but it doesn’t work. I look at the sandwich. Three bites gone.

  Bite. Chew. Adam laughs.

  Swallow. Repeat. Glen laughs.

  The humiliation’s worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Glen pulls out a camera and takes a photo. Then he films me taking a bite. If I can survive having my testicle crushed, I can survive this. It takes ten minutes and then the sandwich is gone. I keep expecting them to make me eat the bit I coughed up, but they don’t. I can feel my face burning, the scar running up to my eye feels tight. My other eye is watering. My bad eye doesn’t, something to do with a damaged tear duct.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad now, was it,” Adam says, and lets me go.

  I drop to my knees. I start to retch. I can taste bile in the back of my throat, but none of the sandwich wants to come back up, which is probably a good thing because these guys would make me eat it again.

  It takes them a few minutes to calm themselves down. Glen has laughed so hard he’s broken into a sweat. It takes me the same amount of time to know I can walk again without vomiting all over myself. They lead me back to my cell. They try to hurry me along, but I maintain a slow speed. They keep laughing at me, and when they leave me in my cell I can hear them laughing back along the corridor.