Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 45217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
“So you think there’s nothing wrong with a forty-two-year-old man making love to a twenty-year-old child?”
“Child,” I repeat through gritted teeth. “She’s a grown woman. A confident, capable, beautiful person. She had to grow up fast because of you.”
And because of me. The lies I told and the choice I made.
“The gall of you, Patrick, talking about children. Lucy told me what you did. I saw Zack’s black eye.”
“There’s a difference between discipline and, let’s say, well… You’d fix a buzz saw, wouldn’t you, if it wasn’t cutting correctly?”
“Your kids aren’t tools. They’re people.”
“There’s a difference.” He knocks the lightbulb, causing it to swing and whine as the light shifts across the bare room. “Between discipline and sexual excitement.”
“Our age doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.”
Patrick titters. “It will when you’re old, decrepit, and can’t walk.”
“I’ll keep my body tough. I won’t flood it with drugs. I’ll work out. I’ll keep myself healthy.” There’s a slur in my voice I don’t like, the stuff kicking in again, poisoning my veins. “I’ll do whatever it takes to stay with my woman, even if it means becoming a goddamned vampire.”
Patrick laughs, clapping his hands. “Your woman. You’re lucky she’s as stupid and insane as you are.”
“That’s your daughter you’re talking about.”
“Zack,” Patrick calls.
I strain in the chair. I’ve been sitting in the same chair and wearing the same clothes since this started. The humiliation this bastard has put me through, doing my business in a goddamn bucket, and now he’s going to involve a kid.
“Leave him alone.”
From where I’ve been pulling, one of my hands is bloody and slick with it. I’ve been doing it nonstop, and now I feel the ropes straining. He shouldn’t have injected me with that stuff. It’s numbing me, but I don’t care if I break my hand to escape.
Zack marches into the room with his head bowed, his greasy hair over his eyes. He looks half feral.
“I think it’s time you became a man, don’t you?”
Patrick walks to the corner of the room, looks around, and picks up a needle.
“Don’t you fucking touch him with that,” I roar, losing control of myself, unable to focus on anything except this evil, this sickness. “Don’t touch him. Zack, get away from him. Run, Zack.”
Patrick rolls his eyes, taking his spoon from his pocket and unrolling some tin foil. The whole time, Zack stares into space, his eyes empty.
“Zack’s mother was a prostitute,” Patrick says conversationally as he prepares the drug. “She died shortly after he was born. She got into a fight at a gas station. Some guy took his gun from the trunk of his car and just gunned her down. They said he was crazy, but I know her. Knew her. I bet she said some very offensive stuff. She was good at that. At triggering men.”
My hand clamps as I drag just one hand loose. What am I going to do with that? Jesus. My head. So cloudy. My chair isn’t bolted to the floor or anything. I roll my shoulder, wincing, ignoring the pain. This is when prison comes in useful. I’m used to being in pain from the yard fights. I’m used to fighting in cramped, bad conditions.
Again, the numbness of the needle helps me ignore the agony as I launch myself forward. I throw out my arm and grab the fabric of Patrick’s pant leg. He doesn’t react quickly enough. He’s laughing, rolling his eyes, as if he thinks he’s going to kick me away, and maybe he could if I’d kept popping pills, graduated to the needle, and let my body waste away. I didn’t do any of that in prison. I wrote more than ever, and I worked out like a demon.
I pull on his leg so hard he thunders to the floor. His needle and spoon clatter as I drag myself on top of him, raging, wheezing, ready to obliterate him for what he did to me, his daughter, and his son.
He stares up at me lifelessly. Jesus Christ. Just like that, his skull hit the floor when I tackled him. Now, blood pools everywhere. I’ve seen this before in prison. With one punch, the man falls the wrong way and hits his head.
“Don’t look,” I say, turning to Zack and holding my hand out.
He’s got a knife in his hand, staring at me wild-eyed. I can do nothing as I straddle his dad, the man they say I killed—the man I really have killed now.
Zack’s hand trembles. “Dad said if anybody ever got the better of him…”
“Your dad is dead. Your sister’s waiting for you, Zack—a better life. I’ve seen it in you. You’re not the person he’s trying to make you. That night, you didn’t want to lure me into that trap. You were crying.”
He croaks and shakes his head. The veins in his neck bulge. “I wasn’t.”