When We Join Jesus in Hell (5 page)

Six

The guns weigh down his pants, and the movement has slackened the band, so he pulls them out and sets all but one onto Karen’s lap. He holds the knife. He thinks that Jesus has probably used this knife many times, as he sat and schemed with vacant eyes over a modest but charred table while Jesus’ aunt preached the love of God to him. He hears her voice in the walls…
He used to be a good kid
…and Fist thinks,
His time is almost up
.
There will be no second chance for him
. And the weight of truth nearly crushes him again, he can feel himself and the agony resting on his shoulders and the sluggish blood working through his veins, and memories flash behind his eyes, good and not so good, and he just can’t hold onto any of them, they slip through his fingers. He feels like a weak man, a failure, because his job as a husband and a father has never been demanding. He built walls around his heart, somehow he knows, around theirs too, expectations no one could ever meet, dreams that hovered just beyond reach.

Ahead something is staked to one of the cheap gray divider walls. He tells Bethany, “Close your eyes, honey.” She shakes her head. He says, “Do it. Just for a little bit.”

I can’t
, she whispers.
I’m scared
.

They move closer. Bianca speeds back toward him, climbs his pant leg, up his torso and rests on his shoulder, her sides expanding and contracting, dark eyes doing their best to pierce the gloom and as silly as it is he wants to ask her what she’s seen ahead, as if she has a hand in this, some type of guardian angel.

A bad smell lingers. Rotten meat, he thinks.

The gecko’s cool body soothes the gunshot wound but a dull throb makes his left eye twitch.

The wheel screams as he pushes the cart.

The clock ticks in his head.

Someone glances around the corner, just a blur of dirty face, long hair, large white teeth.

Bethany turns her head and studies him with wide eyes, her mouth partially open and frozen in place.

Fist says, “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Karen says,
You can’t protect us from everything
…

And he fears she’s left off:
You can’t even protect yourself
…

He squeezes the knife as if it’s a lifeline even though he knows its work is something completely different. It feels natural in his fist, as if an extension of his soul, a portent, a solid piece of his purpose. Fist keeps an eye on the corner ahead, not sure what types of monsters wait for them, but determined to fight them because to back away now would destroy him.

Somebody clicks their tongue and the music starts playing again.

He wonders what kind of place this is.

No one has the answers. He thinks life is like that, so many people just doing what makes them feel good, not understanding half their choices, the repercussions of their lusts. He can’t wait to see Jesus. Fist doesn’t feel like the vengeful hand of God, he doesn’t think he’s righteous or good, he only wants the grief to lessen, to know that men who destroy lives are held accountable and not free to walk the streets, break down doors, force themselves into the lives of those minding their own business and doing their best just to live however they know how.

He doesn’t understand why no one ever does anything about it. He had daydreams about being a super hero when he was a kid. To see wrongs righted. To lend a hand in the balance. But even as strong and brave as he felt, he can’t remember ever doing anything noteworthy or noble.

Karen says,
They’re scared, Fist. It’s natural
.

“I know,” he says. “I don’t blame them.”

Bethany whispers,
I hurt, Daddy
.
My secret spot hurts
.

Fist clenches his eyes shut. He can barely breathe.

Karen pulls their daughter close and the cart rocks in Fist’s hands. The clock keeps time with his heart. They round the corner and a bright light glows at the center of a long corridor. Fist shields his eyes. Bianca stirs on his shoulder and he wonders if she can see a trace of luminance, if her sight isn’t as completely gone as he’d first expected. He hopes so. He wants her to see.

Something rumbles far off. It sounds like thunder but he doesn’t recall any warning of rain. Fist wonders where God is in all of this. Or if the only God anyone has ever known is Chaos, a legion of dark angels, a monumental mountain of failed lives, wasted energy and selfish prayers. He knows at his core that the life he’s designed, every choice he’s made, any reaction that first formed in his mind, weighs heavily upon him alone. There is no one else to blame. No scapegoat god or bad relationship to point the finger at.
It was always me
, he thinks. The intensity of it all nearly crushes him. His wife pulls his daughter’s hair into a pony tail and kisses the top of her head but Fist can barely see them through the brightness and tears.

He clenches the knife tighter and strides forward.

Halfway down the hall he hears water dripping. A woman screams. A man cackles and a dog whines. As he moves he thinks the light should grow brighter but it dims. Slowly, pale shapes rise from beyond the light, dark things that look like hunched gargoyles. Sweat breaks out on his forehead and runs down his face. The gargoyles rise. Their red eyes glare. Fist steps in front of the cart between them and his family. His flesh feels scaly and his scalp prickles. But he knows somewhere beyond the guardians lies a feast, and in that quiet room where the lamb lays, he will have his fill.

He expects resistance. Searing pain as the shadows blur and their claws dig into him, but he wants them to, thinks,
I deserve to suffer a lot more than I have
…

A sudden coldness radiates from his wife. She whispers,
Don’t talk like that
.

The gargoyles inch forward, their eyes like beacons in the night, and Fist hears some far-off horn blow as a ship breaks waves upon a choppy sea, and he knows he’s nearing the shore, that somehow, in this horrible place he never even thought about, Fate has carved the remaining moments of his life in stone.

He says to Karen, “Please. Be quiet.”

Don’t do this to yourself
.

A hand brushes his shoulder. There is love, more than he ever thought existed, in her touch. He sobs, wondering why they couldn’t have loved each other so purely just days ago.

The creatures move closer and part from the murk and he can see by their dirty and torn clothes that they are men, but when he looks in their eyes he still sees something else. Something base and primal, filled with need and hunger. He smiles at them. They clench their fists tighter. One of them squeezes a lead pipe. The other holds a two-by-four. The one on the left is a few feet closer than the one on the right. Everyone is holding their breath.

Bethany says,
Protect us, Daddy
…

Bianca stirs on Fist’s shoulder and he can’t risk hurting her. He steps back. The men close the distance, the darkness like crescent wings whipping from their backs paints the ceiling and hall behind them black.

The clock ticks…

Fist clutches a pistol, his father’s he believes, before he even realizes it. He points it at the closest one and pulls the trigger and the man’s head snaps back and he crumples, sweat stinging Fist’s eyes and red staining the wall and everybody’s pulses crackling like kindling tossed on a dying fire. The remaining man throws his two-by-four on the floor in surrender. Fist smiles a little wider and shows him the end of the muzzle, a welcome to the final and greatest darkness, and says, “It’s too late for that,” though he can’t hear his words over the ringing in his ears or the cries breaking free of the cart behind him.

He squeezes the trigger.

Fire lights his way.

He’s so hungry he almost forgets his family.

Fist says, “I’m sorry,” as he tucks the pistol in his pants and grabs the cart.

Karen squeezes his hand.
No matter how this ends you’ve done your best, Fist
.

Bianca shivers on his shoulder. He wishes he could knit her a little jacket. He wishes he could believe his wife really means that but knows he’s nothing, this life he’s lived is nothing, a pile of dog shit that didn’t bring one bit of good into the world in thirty-odd years.

Bethany’s eyes glow in the gloom as they move down the hallway. She whispers,
What about me?

Fist cries. When he stops, he screams, “You were our whole world.”

His voice echoes throughout the building, off walls he can’t see, and it lingers in nooks and crannies, a faint broken cry,
You were our whole world
…

Seven

And nearing the end of the corridor, he thinks that’s what matters. That Bethany was their whole world and now all he has left is a pet that no one else gives a shit about. But he does. And he cares about the weight of the pistol in his hand, the blowing wind of regret in his mind, and the quiet appreciation for everything he’s had in his life up to this point, and he hasn’t felt this grateful since he was a small child.

The gray walls end and spill Fist and his family out onto the main floor. Half of it really. The maze crouches behind him and the end of the building looms ahead. The walls are crumbling and water trickles to the floor.

Jesus isn’t in sight, but he didn’t expect him to be.

His neck itches.

Fist scans old machinery as bats flicker in and out of sight.

He thinks the little gang banger is close by, maybe with a gun too, that he has it trained on Fist and if so there’s not much he can do about it. He believes that coming here has brought him full circle, closer to the beginning and the love he’d once had for his family before unmet expectations and failure after failure weighed them down. He knows how much of it was his fault. How
ungrateful
he’d been, because he can remember all the good things that Karen had done—not out of obligation but because she wanted to. And he can feel her so close, better than he deserves down in this dungeon, and he looks up at the glass ceiling and the moon stamped there like the finger of God has drawn it just for him, to let Fist know he is one with the night, a child of darkness as much as he is of light. It rips him apart, the conflicting parts of his nature: the good that believes we dream for a reason, to reach beyond ourselves, to build something wonderful and lasting; and yet the bad manifests in a dark faith that after these few final moments he will have nothing left to live for, nothing to help him struggle forward but memories.

He screams, “Say my name! Say it!”

Fist
, Karen whispers.

Daddy
, Bethany chokes out.

He turns to them, hands full of steel, his eyes brimming with ghosts.

Someone groans in the darkness. He can’t tell where it’s coming from.

Bianca licks her eyes, shifts on his shoulder, her muzzle close to his neck.

Fist grips the pistol and knife, but he wants to set them down and use his hands to take Jesus’ life. He tucks the pistol in his pants and pulls out his phone. He dials the number he dialed from the house he torched. A moment later another phone rings near the far left corner and Jesus lets out a sudden, scared breath.

Fist drops his phone, grabs the pistol and fires six rounds into the darkness, the gunshots so loud he can barely see straight, can’t even feel his pulse for a moment, part of him hoping that one of the bullets found its mark.

He kisses his wife and daughter and shifts position, sliding into the shadows of the closest machine, some type of bottler or another, its hulking mass like a long dead king. He waits, his breath misting from his lips. It’s colder than it should be. His shoulder weeps. The smell bothers him. He hopes it’s not infected but there’s nothing he can do about it right now. Looking around the machine, he sees something glimmer in the corner and jerks his head back right before an explosion rips through the building, a staccato drum beat that ping, ping, pings, off the rusty contraption shielding him. He sucks in a cold breath, wipes a hand down his pants. Bianca watches him. Her lips move and he can almost hear her talking. He can almost see the future in her blind eyes. Two black and sparkling crystal balls appraising him. He strokes her head as Jesus moves, the quick shuffle of feet as he repositions himself. Fist hopes he’s working his way closer, then thinks about the way the floor is probably laid out.

Bianca says in Karen and Bethany’s voices,
You can’t let him make it to the exit
.

A razor blade keeps working its way deeper into his heart and he can barely breathe but he gets his feet moving, gun raised, as he ducks around the machine and runs forward almost feeling like he could blast right from the ground like a missile and destroy his enemy upon impact. But it’s not like that. Dreams are not reality.

There is a door on the side wall, a fire exit perhaps, and a dark shape is making tracks for it like Hell is on his heels. He’s nearly there. Fist’s instinct is to pursue him, but he knows how out of shape he is now after nearly a decade of sitting in an office, a small paunch hiding the button of his pants, his cheeks fattened and pale, a cold sweat brandishing his skin with shame. He pauses, raises the pistol and takes aim.

The clock ticks…

He squeezes the trigger with hate and hope running rampant through him, and he feels like he should be able to see the bullet traveling, blazing through the gloomy depths, until it pierces Jesus’ back and sends him sprawling.

But Jesus slides left as a bullet slams the door. He’s on his hands and knees and Fist is closing in on him without thinking, the pistol still up, ready to jam it beneath the kid’s chin and send him into oblivion.

Jesus springs from his crouch, raises his hand and fire flares and fills Fist’s vision. Half his face is burning up. He clamps down on the panic, fights all the images flashing through his head, forcing them to slow down because he doesn’t want to reach the end of them and have to accept that there might not be any more after the next few seconds.

He touches his face, runs his fingers softly over the hole in the top of his forehead. Jesus is grinning at him, visibly shaking as he rushes forward, the pistol he carries still raised and all Fist can do is stand there and wait for him. He can’t move a muscle.

Bianca whispers a song in his ear and it fills his heart with sadness because she’s telling him that she loves him, that she’s thankful for all he’s done for her, that he’s made more of a difference than he ever realized by that one small act.

Miniscule to you
, she says.
Incredible to me
.

He finds a little strength, though it’s barely enough to blink. It seemed that all the stories he’d ever heard were tragedies when you got right down to it because all good things run their cycle and end up nourishment for things yet to come.

Jesus is up in his face. He knocks the pistol from Fist’s grip. Laughter builds all around them, and Fist turns his head, sees Karen and Bethany, both of them holding each other and waiting for a reunion Fist realizes he doesn’t want yet. Jesus’ breath stinks like old oil. He says, “You fucked up, boss.” He seems unharmed, the last of his tremors fading. He raises the pistol and presses it over Fist’s heart. Bianca slides down Fist’s shoulder and across the barrel and Jesus jumps, jerking the gun away, startled.

Fist smiles for a second as his hand closes over the knife tucked into his waistband. He takes a quick step to close the distance, hoping his aim will be true because he doesn’t want anymore collateral damage.

Bianca skitters across Jesus’ back. He’s freaking out, trying to rip his shirt off and Fist thinks it’s almost funny that a man could be so scared of a little lizard that has nothing left. His vision fades in and out, bright and white, then black, then bright again. He grabs Jesus’ wrist and the kid kicks out blindly. Fist absorbs the strike against his leg, absorbs what power he can from it. He squeezes harder, hoping he’ll be able to crush bone, and Jesus screams. Fist stabs the back of the boy’s neck, buries the small blade to the hilt. The jolt of impact nearly knocks him down, but he hangs on, rips the knife free, sees Bianca wink at him and crawl down Jesus’ leg, make tracks back toward the cart where Fist’s family waits for him.

His head thrums with an ache so thick he can barely focus on anything but this one thing left to do.

Jesus tries to turn the gun toward him but Fist slashes his fingers and the pistol clatters against concrete. He stabs the kid in the back, hoping he can pierce his lungs. He stabs again. Again. Each time he jerks the blade free a spray of blood jets out and Jesus’ is wheezing, falling to his knees. Fist jabs the blade into his ear and Jesus howls. He holds a bloody hand to his head. Fist says, “Forgive me.” He stabs the knife and pins the kid’s hand to the side of his head. Jesus tries to jerk it free with his left hand but his eyes water and his face contorts from the pain. Fist scoops him up under the arms and throws him toward one of the machines. A chain dangles there. He thinks,
I can get it around his neck. I’ll beat him to death
…

He looks at his family.

His wife says,
Enough
.

His daughter cries because she’s never seen this side of him and it scares her.

It scares him, too, but they’d never believe him because at this moment he
enjoys
it; just like he did in the ring with the random boxer who talked a big game and did shit outside the ring, trying to get under his skin and into his head, and they learned the hard way, and much too late, that it only fueled what Fist needed to win.

Jesus lashes out with his left hand, still some fight in him, and Fist respects that in a way he can’t fully understand. He grabs the punk by the throat and bounces his head off a chunk of rusting steel. Jesus goes limp. Fist can barely stand, his vision all spotty and he knows he needs to end this before he bleeds to death, before the bullet that went into his skull ruins all his wiring. He looks at his family for strength again but they won’t meet his eyes. He scowls, hurt deeper than he’s ever hurt, and thinks,
I am doing this for you
,
don’t you understand?

His wife says,
It doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t make you a better man
.

She was always scared of this side of him. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So gentle and so violent. So much like his father in so many ways.

Fist blinks. Shakes his head. Bats roar by and the night closes in, wrapping everyone up in its arms. He believes this is right. This is what must be done. Even his father, who he knows doesn’t respect him, agrees that this is it. This is justice. Ugly and stark.

He kicks the punk’s legs out from under him and wraps his hands around Jesus’ throat and squeezes as hard as he can. The kid squirms and bucks against him hard for a moment and Fist can feel the life going out of him even as it flees himself, and he watches his family and Bianca who studies him with those blind eyes and he realizes how much like her he’s been—how helpless, how much he’s needed direction and support, never quite as strong as anybody needed him to be, or as hard as he thought he was, and he cries and squeezes harder, holding on to the thing that taught him the hardest lesson he’s ever learned...to look inside. To appreciate the little things.

The clock ticks…

His wife is outside the cart, holding their daughters hand, her eyes brimming with tears. Her lips quiver. She holds one arm out to him but it takes all of the strength Fist has to let go of the corpse he’s holding and stand. Karen wipes a tear from his cheek and whispers,
It’s okay. We’ve got forever
.

He stumbles into her and she holds him and holds their daughter and Bianca clings to his hand and he wants to get her out to the car and feed her because she has to be starving, but he collapses. The ceiling hovers way, way up there in the blackness, and he feels blood streaking from his forehead and back into his hair.

Karen sobs and holds his hand.

He whispers, “Don’t cry. We got this.”

Bethany prays for him to be okay, then she prays they’ll all be okay.

He says, “I love you. Don’t worry, Daddy’s okay.”

Bianca’s tiny feet pitter-patter across concrete, until she climbs onto his chest and curls up over his heart.

He rails against the blackness dragging him down, trying to hold on for just a few more seconds, but wind roars through the building and his body shudders, and he cries, “I’m sorry for...”