by Gary Sapp
away.”
“I can’t, Thomas.” She yelled over the cries of the dead and dying. “Even if I wanted to, I’ve come too far to turn back now.”
The final door closed, and Serena found that after she blinked again that she and Thomas were seated on the wooden bench as when this whole episode started. This time, however, she saw birds flying in the sky, she heard bees buzzing about, and a school of ants crawled on her shoe.
Thomas Pepper had changed with the scene as well.
He had lost a lot of his weight, his hair had thinned and most of the life had drained out of his eyes.
He was watching children playing in the distance…what appeared to be real children, not paper caricatures, playing together in a space perfect for viewing although he couldn’t reach out to them as he might have wanted to.
He slowly turned around and found her eyes with his own tired, sad eyes.
And Thomas Pepper or whatever this entity had been said, “You should turn around, Serena.” And when she did not right away he said again with gruff in his tone. “You should turn around…”
…And when Serena did finally turn around, she was back on the jail’s floor and had tuned in time enough to hear one of the male uniformed officers’ call out to the other one. “Hey Freddy,”
Officer Fred Dennison:
He was a brown skinned Black man who was all chests, shoulders, afro and beard. Since his friend had broken his concentration, he stopped doing his paperwork long enough to stretch and yawn. The lone female officer noisily pushed her chair back from her own desk and told the other two that she was stepping out back for a smoke and would make another pot of coffee, if they wanted some, when she got back.
Dennison called out to her: “Please do, Pam. Just make sure you wash your nasty ass hands before you do.” Both men laughed. She removed the cigarette from her fingers long enough to give her co-workers the finger before closing the door behind her.
Fred stretched again and said to the other officer: “And Joe, I ain’t got time for your bullshit. It’s almost 7:30 AM. The sun’s already up. You see all this paperwork I still got to finish before the end of our shift an hour from now. The old lady’s about sick of all the overtime I’ve been working. I’m going to get this shit done, and work a little somethin’…somethin’ this morning with her before she’s off to work herself.”
Joe Wilson had ignored his friend and edged himself closer to her cell. “Yea, you’ll tell me anything, Freddy. But I’ve seen you watching this one since they brought her ass in last night.” Wilson said to his friend Fred Dennison without looking at him. “Why don’t you come a little closer and take a closer look at this.”
Officer Joe Wilson:
He had a small build, golden brown skin, green eyes and his hair could not decide whether it was brown or red when the sunlight hit it from above.
“She’s a little bony for my taste, man.” Officer Dennison replied and went back to his paperwork. “I know you like them types though. I’ll tell you what…why don’t you look enough for the both of us while I finish this—“
“Why don’t you come over here?” Joe Wilson waved a single finger at her.
Serena’s heart thumped louder in her chest as she sat up and slid her frame into the corner of her cell as far as she could from Officer Joe Wilson and his little probing green eyes. He kept summoning his friend to his side, the other man finally giving in to the chiding.
“You know, I was talking to one of the reporters outside, you know after the cameras finally went dark last night.” Officer Wilson said. “Patsy Clark, you know the brunette who looks like she needs a new hairstylist, actually allowed the word brilliant come out of her mouth when she went to describing this bitch. Patsy thought that even after what this woman said on that web program with that other reporter…what’s his name…the big guy?”
Dennison nodded his fat head. “Yea, you are talking about Pepper, Thomas Pepper who used to write for The Advocate.”
“Yea, that’s him.”
“And now that you say it, I remember what you told me that chick reporter said to you last night.” Dennison’s frown grew intense. “She thought it took a superior mind to conjure up mining those streets that led to Pepper’s crib like that.”
Wilson shook an oversized key ring out of his pocket, sifts through them until he has found the correct one, and unlocks her cell…and steps inside. Dennison takes a long hard look over his shoulder for Pam, gazes back at his partner and ask him what in the hell did he think he was doing.
“If she’s so smart I need her to educate me some.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know Johnathan Boatwright?”
Dennison had to search his memory. “Yea, I know him; he’s a skinny dude who worked Buckhead a lot last year.”
“He was a skinny dude, man.” Joe Wilson said. “He was one of the first patrolmen to get the call when the feds learned that she was up at Pepper’s townhouse.”
“Boom!” Fred said and threw his hands towards the ceiling to highlight the effect.
Serena jumped. She steadied her left hand as Fred Dennison laughed out loud at his own stupidity. Stay calm, Stay focused, she thought, let them have their fun. They aren’t stupid enough to try anything with you.
Under normal circumstances her training would provide her with more than an adequate chance to disarm and kill both these men with simply her bare hands. But she’d been weakened by her processing, her lack of food and proper rest. And, rather she wanted to admit it or not, shaken to her marrow by the vision she’d experienced with the parody of Thomas Pepper and his three doors to prophecy.
And that hard look…the look of hatred, especially in the eye of the big one, Officer Fred Dennison unnerved her.
“A blast like that normally would kill a man on the spot.” Officer Wilson was saying.
“What, Joe, don’t tell me that he survived?”
“Nah, man…Boatwright died last night.” Wilson sounded remorseful. “He lived long enough for me and some of the guys to see him at the hospital.”
Wilson began to approach her again, while his partner backpedaled towards the door where Officer Pam Greer had walked out of to smoke her cigarette. Serena felt the cold steel of the bars behind her massage her shoulders as he leaned on them. Her lips trembled and she tasted something sour in her mouth.
Joe Wilson stood nearly on top of where she was seated.
“I’ll never forget the look of uncertainty plastered in Boatwright’s eyes even as his face couldn’t be seen under all those bandages.” Joe said in a low voice that only she could hear. Fred Dennison was well out of hearing range. “He was so scared.”
Serena had hoped that Dennison, at the least, would come to his senses when he reached the door. But instead of looking out of it for Officer Greer she heard him lock it, the bolt sliding true with an audible click.
The sound reminiscent of the closing doors of prophecy in the vision she experienced earlier.
“What I like is that the same look my friend had in his eyes before he died,” Wilson continued. His friend Dennison had reentered the cell and locked it behind him. “I really like that you… you little brilliant bitch, you have that look on your face right now as well.”
Joe Wilson shook his red head once and then again. “But I’m going to wipe that look off of your face; there ain’t any reason for you to be scared of old Joe.” He slid his belt through his loop, handed his gun to Fred and began to unbutton his pants. He asked about Greer, while he kicked off his shoes.
Dennison’s hard look held up. He told Wilson that Greer was probably running her mouth with the detectives who were arriving early for their shift. She ain’t had a steady man in months.
“Well, that fact is gonna change real fast for you isn’t it, Rooster?” Joe said to her as he lifted her chin. “Even after you threatened Black children in front of the entire world, it wasn’t a guarantee that our justice system would convict you. Even after yo
u admitted that you gave the order to kill innocent people on 411 there was still no guarantee that they would toss you in a cell like this one and throw away the key.”
“You’re right, Joe.” Dennison agreed. “They always get off.”
He squatted down next to her and Serena turned her head away. “What I am going to do right now…I’m going to be brilliant. I am going to prove once and for all that rape is not about sex but about power. I’m not the least bit attracted to you. But I’m going to guarantee that you never forget this moment of my total control over you.”
Wilson ripped at her jail issued gown, while he fumbled with releasing his manhood from his trousers. Dennison has his own gun out and pointed at her head and the look of hatred on his face is unnecessary because Serena was already convinced that he will shoot her if she makes too much of a fuss.
Serena struggled, shook her head wildly in denial, and managed to flip over, ending up on her knees.
That didn’t work in her favor however. Wilson uses the bars of the cell…and then his own body weight to pin her in the corner.
Serena had exhausted her last avenues of escape.
If she dared to scream, she knows that Dennison will shoot her.
She can feel Wilson’s hand ripping at her underwear…she can feel him hardening as it begins to part her thighs and grace her pubic hairs.
Serena remembered her conversation with Louis Keaton, in what feels like a lifetime ago: And often too many of them are uneducated, unreliable