“Cadet Jones, why did you stop your attack?” Judge Fox questioned, taking steps between them with his back to Ocasio.
“Sir?”
“Did you not hear me, cadet? I guess some of you maggots lied on your physical exams, then? Here I am thinking I’m teaching future Judges, Judges, who have no room for hereditarily unfit citizens that—”
“Sir, I hear you, sir! I finished my attack; the target has been subdued!” Jones shot back, his eyes struggling not to fall over Cadet Ocasio.
Judge Fox held a hand out flat. “Your weapon, cadet.”
Ezekiel broke through the pieces of steel and brick and harder things he thought couldn’t be blown down before glancing down at the empty hand. He complied with the order.
“Cadet Ocasio,” Judge Fox started, before turning to the muck-covered cadet. “Please, share with your classmates the brilliant strategy you used to protect yourself from an oncoming attack.” Ezekiel’s eyes spilled down, bulged and begging that through some kind of telepathy he’d never had, he’d be able to tell Ocasio No, take a reprimand, take a week in the Cube, take anything but that order.
Cadet Ocasio slowly, carefully raised a hand to cover his face. It happened so fast, blood bursting out with Ocasio’s screams before he keeled over, half his face folding into the wetness of the mud.
Judge Fox spun to meet Cadet Jones’s eyes, expecting him to make a move against him, to reach for his training partner, to do anything but be the good little cadet he was. Cadet Jones stayed solid, staring forward and pushing everything into a small brushfire in his mind.
“This is a subdued aggressor, Cadet Jones. Do you see the difference?” Judge Fox asked innocently, as if he’d only smacked a ruler to the back of Ocasio’s hand. Cadet Jones nodded eventually, unsure if he even had that much in him.
It wasn’t enough for Fox, it seemed, who leaned in to Ezekiel’s ear, dropping his voice for only the two of them to hear.
“Take your bottom to the medical wing. Your new bunkmate will be assigned within the hour.”
Spit clung to Ezekiel’s ear. Jones met the Judge’s eyes, filling them with every mistake they tried to strip away, and then nodded once more, taking one of Cadet Ocasio’s arms over his shoulder, carrying him off to the medical wing without words, only knowing that he’d be packing for more than one cadet’s departure that night.
AALIYAH
I’D JUST FINISHED a TED Talk when it happened. Another attempt to remind people that we were human, beneath the badges and bad associations; another thing you thought didn’t matter, Colin. They approached me, from behind, before I could unlock my car door, before I could pick up my son from my next-door neighbour, Ms. Branden.
They asked me questions about a gun, of all things, saying a tip had brought me up for questioning, and nothing at all to do with the video I’d acquired a few nights before.
“I’ve done nothing wrong. I have no idea how that weapon ended up with me. Well, I do have an idea, but it’s not one you assholes will ever admit to, is it?” I said, and the officer rolled his eyes.
“You want to get under my skin, don’t you?” he said. “You think bringing up what you’ve done to the good men who protect you and your right to protest in the streets against them… You—I’m not going to bite, lady.”
I can’t quite find the word to explain what I did next. Laugh? No, that’s not enough. Cackle? Hoot and holler like a hyena? Still too conservative a description.
I kept going for two and a half minutes.
Then I wiped my tears away, not aware the moment of joy would be stolen from me soon enough.
“You think lives spent on you is funny?” he spat. “You deserve all that’s coming to you.”
That quieted me for a moment, but not for the reason he thought. “No. I don’t think that’s funny. I just find it interesting that you can’t see it. You do know that I’ve protected officers, detectives like yourself, don’t you? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you think I’m just out to slam every cop who shows up and does their job. Yeah, you have some bad hombres, don’t you? But hey, they aren’t all bad. Some of them are rapists, some of them are—”
“Okay, laying it on a little thick now, aren’t we?” he said.
I flung my hands up, but he was kind of right. “Listen, detective, you’re only hurting yourself. I know what you’re really doing, bringing me in here on some bogus shit. I know you’re trying to threaten me, but I think we both know I didn’t do anything wrong here. The only thing I did wrong was share a video.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about, ma’am.”
“Oh! Well, that’s embarrassing. For a moment, I thought you may have me in here for putting up that clip of the Chicago PD beating the holy hell out of 12-year-old Chicago resident Presla Bonck, in front of one of your cruisers, no less. I mean, that would mean you were, yet again, abusing your power. You all wouldn’t make that mistake twice, though, so I guess we’re both just riled up for no real reason, now aren’t we?” I said evenly. The officer, who I’d recognised from a video that made its way into a friend of a friend of a friend’s inbox that eventually popped up into mine for better distribution.
“You’re an idiot. You don’t know it, but damn, you’ve really gone and fucked yourself this time.” The officer laughed, which was unexpected but didn’t much shake me. What he did next, though? Scooting from his chair, hunching over me, undoing my handcuffs? That may have thrown me a bit.
“You can cut the tape now, Encinia,” he shouted to the two-way mirror as I rubbed my wrists. Before I had a chance to respond, he’d flopped open the manila folder on the desk between us, pulling out a piece of paper and scooting it my way.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, too confused and suspicious to even touch the paper.
“Your lines, Ms. Monroe,” he said with a grin from ear to ear, before the door behind me unlocked and two other officers made their way in. They were men. They were hungry in the way men were told they had to be. There was an absence of everything that mattered in their eyes.
“Don’t worry, they ain’t gonna do nothing to you. Not the way they should, anyway. They just want to see your face for this next part.” As if on cue there was a chortle from the studio audience.
“The hell—?”
“Read, bitch,” one of them interrupted from behind me. I swung my head back, and burned as much of myself into him through my eyes as I could. He was too cold to know the heat, and I was too preoccupied with, I think, plan… 34 on how I would get the hell out of there, to care.
So, I read.
Fuck.
“Are you—you really, really don’t know who you’re fucking with do you? I’ve been ready to die, ready for whatever shit you think you can put over me, for my entire life. You think you can scare me? You think you can make me read this shit aloud to—?” One of them stopped me, pressing his fat finger against my lips. I stopped. You would have too, or at least, that’s what I tell myself. As I was surrounded by the possibility of a great many mayhems, at the fringe of everything they care about. With all my tweets, all my clout, all my class, they still held the match.
It lasts for a second, that hope, that fear, until I remember one of many lessons I’ve had to learn through corpses I’ve aligned myself to. I’ve learned that if you have the ego to call yourself a revolutionary, you have to be prepared for a revolutionary suicide.
“Fuck. You,” I said, taint of pork and things that were made to destroy me still slathered over my lips.
They laughed, one after another in a domino effect.
“Yeah, fuck us. You got some balls on you, lady… What about your son, though? Have his even dropped?” Officer With-A-Death-Wish said. I see red. I see the promise of meat lover’s pizza I forgot I made about and opted for McDonald’s again, on the way home the night before, filed away in the overstuffed folder of ‘Mother I Wanted to Be.’ I see every child’s body I’d seen in one photograph or another over the years. I see Emit. I see E
ric. I see George. I see Trayvonne. I see Cameron. I see VonDerrit. I see Laquan. I see all of them that I should list with every bit of ash in every bit of tomorrow, if I wanted to fill this moleskin with things that make you close it. I see them all because I want to see everything but Elijah.
I see the paper.
“You won’t threaten—”
“We aren’t threatening anything. Not yet. Thurgood, though? He ain’t as gracious. See, we didn’t quite know what to do with you. I mean, what could we? You’re the Bullet Bitch. You have people fooled, don’t you? See, we had a few ways to get rid of you here, ways even the Judges couldn’t deal with. Thurgood though, he knew that whatever evil little cop-hating spawn you bled would be the one way to shut you up, to make you shut yourself up.”
I fought back the vomit. I fought back my free hands, ready to wrap around one of their pistols, ready to end them, then Thurgood, then everything that wasn’t Elijah. I was their Bullet Bitch.
That was, until he said my other name.
“He told us to let you know—shit, one sec…” The officer rustled in his back pocket, pulling out a piece of paper, scrawled in your shitty handwriting, and squinted to read:
“Let her know to read from the kettle, read from the pot, read from everything that will give her the black. I mean, I’m not going to sit here and say he’s not a weird fuck, but you get the point. Read the paper, and then? Thenyou might see your kid again.”
I wanted that smile of his between my teeth. I wanted to tear away all the power he held by way of his dick. I wanted everything, if it meant breaking him.
I also wanted to rewind to the point of my day before the words kettle or pot weren’t uttered. A point at which Thurgood was still just a boogyman.
“Where is he?” I demanded. To your immense surprise, I’m sure, they didn’t answer me.
“This is what’s going to happen,” the officer said, signalling for the other two to leave, now that he’d imagined I’d be a good girl.
“I’m going to clap my hands, and then the camera will start again. You will read that script, and not long after? 10 seconds or so, that door”—he pointed off, keeping his eyes on me—“will be blown to hell. You’ll follow along with the other thugs that come to get you, and you’ll never be a pain in our ass again. Oh! You’ll also see your son, maybe teach him to not make the same mistakes his momma has. You do this, you’re free, we’re free. Unless… you want to keep going? Thanks to Thurgood, we have more than enough to put your ass in orange, and honestly? It seems more fitting, if I’m being honest, but, here we are.” He looked solemn, poor guy.
I thought for a moment, but any more than that would be a betrayal to Elijah. So, I glared, tight-lipped, scanning through the paper I’d been given with my lines, nearly finding a way to laugh again when I reached the one, I knew, he’d thrown in to really piss me off.
“Something funny?” the officer said, worried—almost.
“Everything,” I said. I smiled. I clapped.
“WELL, THAT IS interesting,” Colin huffed, rolling off the other side of the bed. He listened to every click while rustling through his dresser drawers, taking his time to find the perfect outfit for random Tuesday afternoon inside.
He could spend hours choosing between a button-up and a graphic tee. That should have been a warning, if nothing else.
Colin smiled when he heard the clicks stop, when he heard a stream of swearing I can’t even piece together any more.
“You’re a sociopathic prick, Colin.”
That seemed to sting him. He raised his weary head in my direction.
“That… hurts, Aaliyah,” he said, lightly, before turning his grin up to his ears. “I thought I’d been the dropout here. ‘Sociopathy’ is such an antiquated term, it’s just the same traits of a psychopath without the fun, Hollywood vibe.”
“What happened to you, Colin?”
“Awwww, now, come on… it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, Kettle, I needed to see if you were still in there. The you I know you can be.” He slid on a t-shirt and shuffled his legs into jeans twice the size I’d ever seen on him. He finished it off with a wave cap still in the Wal-Mart packaging, tearing it open with his teeth and stretching it over his skull before turning to face me.
“Why the hell are you doing this, Colin? Huh? I—I was… you ruined my life. I was finally, finally getting some traction with the case. I had them, I had them and you kidnap me from the fucking interrogation room? Do you know what that looks like?” I screamed, no bullets, no Muay Thai, nothing but what he’d stripped me down to. “You know, when that jackass detective slipped me that paper, your instructions? I didn’t know it was you until I reached that final bit of shitty dialogue. Oh, and by the way, having me quote Assata? Bet you thought that shit was reeeal fucking clever, didn’t you?” I said, not meaning to compliment him, but I should have realised he wasn’t capable of seeing anything I said for anything but.
“Yeah, I almost wanted to order my people to get a copy of the tape to see that bit myself. I thought you’d be happy, don’t you live on that hotep shit?” he said smugly, as if he ever understood the insult.
“Where is—?”
“—‘my son, Colin?’ Christ, you’re really repetitive with the dialogue, aren’t you?” He picked out a pack of flats from his back pocket and sparked the nothing, growing too comfortable for my liking. “You remember what happens, Kettle? When you pull the trigger? I’m just curious. I never went into academia like you, had the chance to mold the minds of the youth. Never had the chance, now did I?”
“Whose fault was that?”
“Ah, right, that again.” He laughed. “Let’s not change the subject. What happens when you pull the trigger, Kettle?”
I sighed, but also, I wasn’t going anywhere.
I guess if you got this far, neither are you.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CARL ‘CATASTROPHE’ PATTERSON Was A Cold Motherfucker.
When Carl commissioned to have the words etched into his headstone at twenty-three years old, the artist saw the address on his ID and rushed the order at no extra cost. Carl didn’t scrimp, even back then before Thurgood saw his potential began paying him accordingly. Black granite, double upright, plated with white gold, and at its foundation wrapped in a cloth dipped in Chameleon paint. Being the brute enforcer for a mid-level street distributor of Halcyon Daze had its advantages.
He placed it on the front lawn of his six-bedroom house that he’d inherited from his grandmother. She’d been the rock of his life and quite possibly the only person brave enough to tell the 6’6” walking-stop-and-frisk-justification where to go. Tragically, for both Carl and his neighbours on West Nuohlac Street, sweet, Catastrophe-wrangling Geneva Patterson died in her hospice bed, by way of a street-side bullet meant for her grandbaby.
I’m not afraid.
She would use the word ‘cold’ often—it was an adjective that described much of her life—so it felt right to Carl that it be adopted.
That cold muhfucka Rick James could have been your granddaddy if I ain’t git stuck with Cindy’s fucking nightshift and miseed tha’ sho.
This one cold ass beat, why they call it Capture rap again?
This ain’t how shit supposed to go for you, Carl. You tryna end up like that fucking spuhm donor that dipped on you and your momma? You smarta and betta than tha’. Now hush, and pass grandmama that cold ass kush.
She had faith that young Carl would become something more than the accumulation of the bodies he’d broken in his hands.
Granted, Thurgood had the future gunrunner surrounded. He’d graduated from strongman to hitman, which ultimately only meant more class and more corpses.
Six months prior to Judges Poet and Jones descending on his humble town, Carl would take on a job that would change the rest of his life. The newest monster was only known by the name ‘Thurgood.’ While he’d been a seller of a different kind of death than the ones Carl generally dealt with,
he’d been just as detrimental for the chemical capitalism running over the streets. This Thurgood was denying access to his weapons to any drug pusher that came knocking, but with the specific set of skills Carl had to offer, well, maybe he could have been persuaded to open his marketing plan.
What he was, however, was impressed: not by the body but the breathtaking lengths he went to, to make his way into the same room as Thurgood. It wasn’t a trail of bloodied faces and chipped teeth that’d put Thurgood and Carl in an ill-lit parking garage together, Carl seemingly unfazed by the circle of guns around him. It was a correspondence. E-mail after e-mail, gratuitously praising retweets and shared status updates from the fake account of @MarketingManJohnSmith, led him after some time to the inbox of one of Thurgood’s inner circle. Once there, he’d mapped out a plan to market Thurgood’s product in a way that would yield a 300% influx of members.
Unfortunately, when this information was brought to Thurgood, he’d proven not only a genius of engineering, but of the criminal sciences. With a deft ear he’d been able to perceive that John Smith was, quite possibly, a sign of foul play. The ability—known in a better time as fact checking—that Thurgood employed was a relic in this day and age, and it wasn’t one Carl could have possibly accounted for.
Thurgood had the sense to make a meeting… and to bring the appropriate level of protection. Two armoured gunmen sourced out to ensure they knew what they were doing. Three sharpshooters, each with nocturnal introspective, grafted, gas-augmented scopes courtesy of Thurgood.
Halcyon Daze.
An unregulated street drug that sells cheap, with immeasurable worth.
A side effect of the euphoric dopamine dump was the loss of the ability to see pigmentation; the skin of other organisms took on a trippy, translucent sheen.
There was a reasonable argument for its legalisation: it reduced high blood pressure, reversed type II diabetes, even reduced intolerance to lactose. In the end, however, it proved too dangerous for the youth of middle America.
When the Light Lay Still Page 10