Fiend (26 page)

KK’s sitting on my bed when I get back to my cell.

She chars a spoon. I feel like slitting my wrists. I’m about
to ask where she got more dope, but she beats me to it, asking if I want to get spun. I tell her yes. I sit. Our shoulders touch. Boiling splice, things are finally good again between us. She asks what that was all about. I tell her Typewriter’s being a little bitch. She says, Fuck Type. I smile as she takes my arm and her fingers tickle as she strokes a vein and then it’s the pleasant sting of a needle finding a home and then she kisses my ear and pushes the plunger.

Sucks, yo, KK says.

The words hang in the cell. I don’t know if she’s talking about Typewriter or the darkness or our lives. She takes my hand. We interlock fingers. Mine are short and nubby, hers long and slender.

Where are we going to go? KK asks.

I squeeze her hand, tell her, North.

North?

Canada. Northwest Territories. Alaska. Someplace where there’s nobody. Where we don’t have to worry about any of this.

Yeah, except some blubber-eating Eskimo.

Take that right now. Better than this.

Think it’ll work? she asks.

Has to.

No it doesn’t.

I cradle KK’s head and kiss her lips. I take off her jumpsuit. Her skin is cold. I think about Typewriter. He’ll get over it. He’ll understand. He’ll know that everything I do is for him. I take off my suit. We press our bodies against each other and our ribs rub together like a wooden instrument. I’m hearing
Type’s words, his saying he loved me, and I can’t shake the feeling it was a good-bye. I’m hard. KK puts me inside her and I start to move my hips and she tells me no.

Huh?

Not tonight.

I think she’s joking so I give another thrust but she shakes her head and says, I just want to feel you. She kisses me, then rests her head next to mine, her nose in my nook, her pussy lips tight, and she whispers, I loved you so fucking much. My hand is on the back of her head, her hair, then her neck, and I feel the different texture of the tattoo. I wonder if she meant to use the past tense. I tell her I love her more than anything, but these words feel somehow not enough, never enough.

There’s noise from down the hall. KK and I are barely asleep because we’re a little spun and scared. In four more hours we’ll be out of this bitch into the great unknown. It sounds like something dropped, something metal. I grab the pistol from the floor and sit upright, tensed.

What is it?

You hear that?

You’re tripping.

Listen.

We strain our ears.

Lie back down, baby.

But I’m thinking about the door to block A having caved, about the garage door being ripped apart, about block B, and the door to the mess hall. About it all caving and our cells filling with throngs of walking dead.

I’m going to look, I say.

Baby.

It’s fine.

No, don’t be fuckin’ stupid.

Just stay here, be back in like two seconds. I lean forward, kiss the hump of her nose. I walk naked into the common room. It’s pure darkness. I bang my knee on the corner of a table.

In the hallway, I keep my steps light and hold the pistol aimed at nothing.

Step, step, stop, wait, listen.

The giggles take over the silences. They occupy my rests.

I jump when I hear a door close.

I squint trying to make out shadows, movement, sound.

The block B door is still closed and I realize the sound came from the other end of the hallway, from the door to command central, the booking station, and the door to the garage. As soon as I trace this path in my head, I understand what the fuck is going on. Derrick’s bolting. That’s why he wanted to wait until morning. He’s sneaking away like a little bitch motherfucker. This is as much a death sentence as putting slugs into our brains. I start to run. I throw open the door to central booking and then I’m trying to find my way in the darkness and I’m feeling desks and trying doors and groping the walls and I finally hit a metal push bar.

The stairway is dark and I take the stairs three at a time.

I’ll kill him.

I run and I’m out of breath and the concrete is cold on my feet. In the garage I see a shadow putting shit in the cruiser trunk. He’s nothing but the vaguest of outlines. I’m about to yell, but part of me is like fuck that, this motherfucker’s bolting, leaving us for dead, so I flip the Glock around. I charge. I jump into the air and I’m the Air Jordan silhouette, only I’m naked and my stupid dick swings and my basketball is a gun.

There’s a scream.

There’s the cracking of metal against temple.

He doesn’t moan or anything, just slumps over. I peer down. It’s not Derrick. It’s Maddie. I crouch real close and touch his face and my hand comes away soaked.

The fuck?

Please.

Get up.

Maddie struggles to sit. It takes him at least five seconds and then he leans forward, his head between his legs. I hear the pitter-patter of blood dripping onto concrete. I’m speechless.

The fuck you expect me to do? he says.

I don’t know what to say.

I sit. Lean my head against the bumper of the car. The cacophony of laughter is earsplitting. Maddie’s blood on the concrete reaches my naked ass. The end of my sack dips in it. I replay every conversation I’ve had with Maddie over the last few days. The moments when I felt like some sort of connection was being made. My arm around his shoulder. Me thinking that he was just like I was. Me thinking that this kid
looked up to me, was on my side. Me selling him out and the beating and him realizing I was just another piece of shit who would do whatever it took to save himself.

Just fucking kill me, he says.

It’s a faucet, his wound. Maybe he’ll die from this. Losing too much blood or an infection. I’d swung as hard as I could. You did this, he whispers.

Maddie as me. That had been my whole fucked-up fascination with him. Maddie as a kid who didn’t know his ass from his overcoat and a kid who was simply trying to not end up dead and he is me, both then and now, both of us doing what we can to survive. My eyes adjust a little. I see he has the lab broken down and put into the trunk. We’d have died without our ability to cook. He was leaving us to die. And then I’m remembering his creepy-ass voice in the darkened common room—
all going to die
—and it was premeditated, Maddie’s idea to run, probably heard us talking about the cruiser earlier, and of course he knew how to hot-wire a car because he was in here for grand theft auto. This was his only play—take on the world alone, leave the family that betrayed him to go through withdrawals and then death.

I remember him backing away from Derrick, tears already starting, unable to comprehend my cruelty.

And I want to apologize. I want to tell him it was a moment of weakness and fear—I was just fucking scared, man. I’m scared of losing everything I have. I’m scared of not getting what I want. I’m scared I will amount to nothing and I’m scared the doors will cave and six shots won’t be shit and I’m scared the baby hadn’t really turned and that Typewriter will
realize he’s better off without me and I’m scared of KK because I know one day she’ll kill herself and then I’ll be alone, my real fear, all fucking alone.

I’m sorry, I say.

Maddie laughs. It’s wet from the blood pooling in his mouth.

He doesn’t owe me his forgiveness. I know this. Nobody does.

Get the shit over with, he says. He grabs my hand and pushes the pistol to his forehead.

A single shot, any fear of Maddie exposing the real me erased.

Fucking coward, he says.

I’m thinking about Frank, about it being my money and gusto for getting high that led to his death. But this shit with Maddie is different. He wouldn’t be down here if I’d copped to stealing the splice. My direct actions forced his hand. I tell him I can’t. I can’t be that motherfucker. He says, You already are that motherfucker. I lower the gun. I stand. His blood runs down my nuts and onto my leg. I walk to the trunk of the police car and take out a canvas laundry bag full of lab equipment. Maddie clasps his hands together and starts begging between choking sobs. I tell him to come up when he’s done crying.

I’m at the stairs. I hold the railing. Something white catches my eye. I tell myself it’s nothing, but then it disappears for a split second, and I’m staring at these two white floating orbs and I realize they’re eyes. Maddie yells that I’m a piece of shit coward. I drop the canvas bag, training my pistol on
the blinking whites, blood dripping from the handle down my wrist to the floor.

It’s a Chuck, has to be.

I inch forward. Maddie yells to kill him. The eyes keep blinking. My finger presses against the trigger, but I’m not some green motherfucker like a week ago—I know exactly how hard I have to squeeze to dole out death.

The floating eyes speak: Chase, Chase, I’m fucking sorry, bro.

It’s Typewriter.

I can make him out now—a cowering mound of orange jumpsuit, his hands raised like I’m PD.

So fucking sorry, he says, please just don’t shoot.

I stand there naked in the drafty garage covered in Maddie’s blood. I’m realizing what the fuck is going on—the two of them teaming up, just like I thought they would. I want to blast a hole between Type’s eyes.

Typewriter’s bent forward like he’s praying at my feet.

I was right thinking his comments were a good-bye. Motherfucker knew he was bolting. Knew he was killing us all.

He’s nothing but tearful pleas and apologies.

Maddie keeps yelling that I’m a coward.

And the whole thing breaks my fucking heart. I lift Typewriter’s face up with my hand and tell him to stand the fuck up and his whimpers become sobs and giggles from outside swirl around the concrete and I tell him the only thing that seems true at the moment: Any one of us is capable of anything.

So fucking sorry, I’m so fucking—

It’s over, done with. Nobody needs to know, you feel me?

Please …

You came down with me, we saw Maddie, that’s it.

Type’s nods stop for a second as he’s putting together what I’m saying and then he starts nodding faster and this is him understanding and agreeing, selling out a motherfucker who doesn’t matter, becoming complicit, becoming my boy.

Maddie laughs.

He sits there in his own blood, his head leaning against the police car. Typewriter won’t look in his direction. We take the stairs one at a time.

Fucking kill me, Maddie begs.

Step, step, step.

Kill me, you fucking pussies. Fucking kill me.

I set all the lab gear down on a fingerprint station inside of booking. Typewriter keeps apologizing. I say, Shut the fuck up, didn’t happen, feel me? Maddie was bolting. You came down to help. We made him see the errors of his ways. Simple as that.

Type nods. I hit him on the shoulder. He tries to smile. We’re all just trying to smile. I hear giggles and I stare past Type’s shoulder and my eyes have adjusted and I make out a shape through the Plexiglas. I inch closer. I stare at Frank. He has no idea what’s going on. He won’t die and he won’t live and the cure didn’t work for him years ago—God and powerlessness and service and turning our lives over—and it didn’t work for him now.

I think about KK and about atonement and about not dying and the pressure behind my retinas is back and I just want to be out of this jail and someplace safe with the people I love and I wonder if they love me back.

We start running.

I’m sprinting back through the booking station and into the hallway and I see flames huddled together in block C and KK’s voice is the first to reach me, her screaming about me being hurt, he’s fucking hurt, and I grab her tight, tell her I’m fine.

Derrick has a pistol pointed at Type and me. He says, You’re bit.

Maddie’s blood, I say.

Maddie’s bit? KK says.

No, no, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine—

Shut the fuck up and slow down, Derrick says. I know he’s not messing around. I try to breathe and to tell them what happened, first about hearing something, that Type and I went down and found Maddie, about him being scared, thinking about bolting, but we talked and he apologizes, that he’s coming back up.

I’ll kill him, Derrick says.

He gets it. He’s fine. Trust me. He’ll never do something like that again, I say.

Jesus, Randy says.

So fucking dead, Derrick says.

I grab hold of Derrick’s arm. It’s not aggressive but it’s confident and I tell him it’s fucking done with, hundred percent, kid fucked up but gets it. I say, We need to leave right
fucking now. Hole’s big. We don’t have time to wait until sunrise.

He stares at me for a solid three seconds before nodding.

We get our belongings.

KK won’t leave my side. We’re in my cell and she’s crying and I tell her Maddie will be fine and we’ll be fine and I’m giving her a shotgun, clasping her hands around the stock. I put my forehead to hers. She sniffles. Her bony shoulders shake. She says, Okay, even though I haven’t said anything.

We start jogging down the hall and I’m holding on to KK with one hand, the pistol in the other. We reach the booking station. I’m expecting to see Maddie standing there all sheepish and begging for mercy, but he’s not.

The fuck is he? Derrick yells.

I’m hearing pleas. I realize that we’ve accidentally locked Maddie down there in the garage. I run to the door and push it open and he stumbles down and crumples and KK screams or maybe that’s Type and the giggles from the garage are deafening.

Randy flicks a lighter.

Derrick bends over Maddie’s whimpering body. He puts his pistol to the back of his head and then our ears ring and I scream
no
and KK’s body deflates at my side.

The fuck? I yell.

He was bit.

No, that was the blood from when I—

Derrick grabs my neck. He yanks my head so I’m looking at Maddie’s back. It’s covered in scratches and bite marks. Even just with a lighter to see, I can tell they’re already scabbing.
He lets go and I cough and KK cries and I tell myself this isn’t my fault, leaving him down there, my sealing of his death sentence by framing him with the stolen scante.