Liam

I woke up drownin’ in gasoline.

Soaked through my clothes and strapped down tight as an animal to a slaughterin’ table, chokin’ on poisoned air.

There were men shufflin’ around in the dark, moving in and out of whatever room they’d confined me to like demons between shadows.

I yelled out to them blind, turning my head towards the sound of their footsteps, demanding answers to questions they wouldn’t give me. But I’d be damned before I let pigs keep me clueless in one of their pens.

I barked at them, hopin’ to taunt the pair into coming close enough for me to bite. But they stayed safely away, just laughing at me from the wings of the room. My blood burned for another fight, for the chance to tear my restraints apart, rip the black bag away from my face, and beat the bastards black and blue.

But I couldn’t move, and the more I struggled, the harder it was to breathe. Even so, I planned on rubbin’ my wrists and ankles raw before succumbin’ to anythin’ like that.

Treat a man like an animal long enough and he’ll become one. There’s no beatin’ or burnin’ the humanity out of a person with none left. I pushed up against the straps across my chest, waitin’ for the moment where they’d snap to pieces.

But they held fast, and my muscles tightened and stilled like a new weakness had stolen their will power away.

 I kept thinkin’ that gettin’ out was a matter of time and tryin’, that if I fought hard enough my irony hatred wouldn’t rust into fear. But the cold, wet claws of gasoline lingering over my skin, threatened to drive me into quiet madness at the thought of what a spark could do.

A door opened somewhere in the darkness, rattling on it’s old hinges while a third, strangely silent man, stepped into the room.  The pigs who’d been cackling at me in the corners, lost the light in their laughter as his footsteps drew nearer.

After being baptized in death and chaos, I’d started to believe that no other man in the world could frighten me.

            But he wasn’t a man.

The measured way he took every step, every breath, every movement hinted at something deranged, and familiar. Something unnatural. He stood over me for a long while, listening to me grind my tongue between my teeth, just to keep from losing control too soon. Foamin’ at the mouth before the time was right wouldn’t lead me anywhere far.

               So I kept quiet, and waited for the shadow to speak.

He snapped his fingers and a light switched on above his head, like a faded halo. Even staring through that matted black cloth I remember thinkin’ how beautiful the light specks looked after lying in the dark for so long. But then he spoke to me, and all the life in the room died, like he’d sucked the soul out of the air itself. I didn’t need to see his face to know who’d come callin’.

                 You never forget what the devil sounds like.  

            “Rise and shine, Mr. Evans,” he said, behind what looked like the glow of a cigarette. “We’ve got some work to do tonight. But you’ve done well thus far. Much better than I’d hoped, and I like overachievers.”

Anderson.

I slammed against the restraints to see if I could break free and wrap my fingers ‘round the bastard’s throat. Just hearin’ him speak was enough for my blood to catch fire, and the way he was playin’ around, a spark from his cigarette could do just that.

I’d never been afraid of dyin’ itself, just dyin’ too soon to see things through.

Every night I’d had dreams about seeing him again, all of them violent, all of them awful, all of them ending in me losing my life before finishing out what I’d promised my family and what I’d promised myself.

A flick of his wrist could send what little was left of my life up in flames. Knowin’ that was enough to keep me quiet, but not enough to break a spirit hungry to live and take life.

            “Something wrong, Mr. Evans? I came all the way out here just to see you, and you can’t even manage a ‘hello’? Boys, help him out.”

One of the pigs clamped his hand round my neck so tight I couldn’t manage to swallow. I pushed my jaw down against his knuckles to fight the pressure, but he forced my mouth shut with his free hand, nearly suffocating me through the cloth.

My breathin’ went ragged in the struggle, ‘til the shock of someone else’s fingers sinking through my stitches and into the broken, bleeding, tissue of my bullet wound, drove me to screamin’. Livin’ through the last few days had made me strong, stronger than panic, but not stronger than pain. Not yet.

             “Feeling a little more social?”

            “Go to hell, Anderson."

            “Oh I’m halfway there. Spending the night with you is about as close as it gets, right?”

Some men thrive off of keepin’ others under the soles of their shoes. Anderson lived for it. Didn’t seem he’d hadn’t changed much since we’d last seen each other. The man used to strut round the world in a charcoal suit, grey hair slicked and styled, like he was always up to bad business.

Funny lookin’ back knowin’ I used to think he was some sort of saint, a man redeemed from his mistakes, just ‘cause he took the time to speak with me.

Grief and ignorance are a deadly pair.

Back then, he had the sort of eyes I used to believe in, American blues, sharp enough to cut through the shadows. Stupid to think I couldn’t even see the shadows in him.

            “What else do ye’ want, Anderson? You’ve pissed away your word and screwed over my family, so arrest me and leave it at that. You didn’t come through in a goddamn thing you promised—“

            “Promised? I didn’t make you any promises,Evans. We made a deal, and a deal’s a two-way street.  Blame your brother for things fallin’ apart, he’s got quite a talent for expensive mistakes—“

            “I’ll deal with him, but what about what you’ve done? How is it that your Washington Police knew to look for my brother at Union Station? You said ‘no cops’, Anderson!’”

            He blew a cloud of smoke down onto my face ‘til I choked on the dead air. 

           “Because I’m businessman, Evans, and I always do what’s in my best interest. Simple politics. Press is priceless in my line of work, and you made for a great story.  Not to mention my numbers soared in the polls. There’s no such thing as a quiet crime in this country, Evans. Not unless I make it that way and this one was too good to keep under the table.”

My father was the first monster I ever met in this world. Anderson was the second.  At least Da had reasons for what he became. Terrible reasons, but reasons just the same. But Anderson did what he wanted without reason, and a man without reason is a man without a soul.

I couldn’t speak two words to the old bastard for a long while. The fumes had gotten so bad I’d started sputterin’ and chokin’ like my lungs were givin’ way.

The two pigs lurking ‘round my table kicked over what sounded like tin gas canisters below me, laughin’ while they drowned whatever clean air was left in the room.

Anderson snapped his fingers and all the sound died away in their throats. They scuffled away and stayed silent, waiting on his orders like well-trained beasts. I guess they couldn’t feel it—all that darkness spilling out from his fingertips.

            “Don’t suffocate too soon, Evans. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Stop spoilin’ the fun. Want a cigarette? If you can hold it in your mouth for thirty seconds, I’ll tell you a story.”

            Anderson came deadly close to knickin’ my face as he cut a hole through the bag over my mouth. He stuck his cigarette between my teeth before I had the chance to start cursin’.

            “Hush up, son. You might drop that. There’s a whole lotta gas in this room. On you, on the floor, everywhere, and I wouldn’t want anything bad happen, now would I?”

            I struggled to keep my lips still. The fear in not knowin’ how much space was left to burn tore through my nerves like fire through tobacco.

             “That’s good, Evans, real good. You know somethin’? I’ll let you hold on to that cig while I tell you a story. How’s that? You need a smoke more than I do right now, anyway.”

            God willing, I wouldn’t die suffocating on his smoke.

            “Ever wonder why I picked you, Evans? Ever wonder why I let you live tonight, instead of lettin’ my friends on SWAT shoot you dead in the woods? I’ll tell you if you say please without droppin’ that cigarette. Go on, try. I wanna see you try.”

Whatever it was that’d been driving me, making me feel like a man with more of a purpose than most, died away while he taunted me like a child. I’d acted like a child when I met him, no surprise he’d try to bring that out of me again.

I’d spent so many days on that bus line, driving back and forth to D.C. I used to walk a mile or so in the cold just to stand outside his office with a picture of my mother’s face, hopin’ he’d see it, hopin’ things would change.

There were others; a handful of families who’d lost children, fathers, other pieces of their hearts to the cancer in the walls of Anderson’s schools.

Six weeks went by like that. Driving, standing, waiting, ‘til I went numb to it all. The marchin’ started feelin’ pointless, like Anderson and his suits were laughin’ at us from behind their black glass windows. But an evenin’ came where the man I’d spent half a’ year hatin’ finally spoke to me.

Picked me out of the crowd and asked me who the beautiful woman was in my picture. I explained her story on the walk to his car, tryin’ to hide the hurt behind it.

I don’t know what it was about Anderson that disarmed my anger for a short while. Maybe it was the money, or least the promise of it.  Before he’d even dropped me back at the Greyhound, he had a job for me and I’d needed one.

He said it was “the least he could do” for my family. He didn’t mean a goddamn word, but it’s hard to hear the truth when money’s talkin’. That mistake destroyed my family, and there’s no forgiveness left in the world for anything like that, or for anyone like me.

I half-swallowed what little was left of the cigarette seared my taste buds to bacon putting the fire out with my tongue. I spat the butt back at Anderson, and breathed out the pain through my nostrils, stopping myself from making any sound that would’ve piqued the bastard’s interest.

            “That right there, that’s why I like you, Evans. That’s why I picked, you. Cause you’re wild, ‘cause you’ve got so much hate boiling inside you, you don’t know even what to do with it. You stood out from a mile away, with that desperation.

Nobody else out there was burning up like you, son. Spirits like yours are destined to do great things. That’s why I gave you my card then, so how do you feel about doing something even greater for me now?”

            “Not on your life, Anderson.”

            “Would you do it on yours?”

He clicked his fingers and his pigs came clunkin’ across the room, grunting and cursing like making their way over to me was a sudden struggle.  I waited for whatever was comin’, tryin’ hard as I could to swallow the bile creepin’ up the back of my throat.

A shadow dark enough to block out the light passed over my head and my heart began batterin’ itself to bruises no matter how much I willed to keep still.

I kept wonderin’ why he’d covered my face, why a man like him wouldn’t want to watch every minute of me comin’ apart at the stitches. Whatever the reason, there wasn’t any mercy in it.

            “I wanna try somethin’, Evans. We’ve got this exercise we do in the military when people don’t wanna cooperate, and I think it’ll be good for you. Stress builds character. When you’re ready to do what you’re told, give me a holler and we’ll get to talkin’.”

The pigs pushed what felt like two cinder blocks worth of cement down on my chest, while I scrambled to figure out how to keep breathin’. I hoped to God that my ribs wouldn’t break under the pressure.

The ragged edges of the concrete cut jagged holes into my skin through my shirt, and every time I writhed against the pain, they pushed harder. I held my breath hopin’ to fight the pressure, but they slammed the weight down, ‘til all the air came rushing out of my lungs entirely.

Panic had me clawing at the table with my fingernails ‘till they bled. I flailed and gasped, tryin’ to suck in what little air I could through the hole in the bag. But there wasn’t any room left in me to breathe.

For a sliver of a moment, I couldn’t figure out a way to stop death from crushing the life out of me. For a sliver of a moment, I was just as terrified of dyin’ as I was failin’ my family. But before I could suffocate, Anderson clicked his fingers and stopped them.

They lifted the weight up and away from my chest, leavin’ my skin bruised and broken. I gasped in mouthfuls of air, cryin’ out at every breath from the pain. Sometimes you can’t hide it, not even from your enemies.

            “You ready to cooperate, Evans? You’re lucky I’ve got good timing or they might’ve killed you.”

            “What in the hell—do you want from me?”

I couldn’t keep from suckin’ in lungful after lungful of gasoline-tinged air. Wherever she was, I hoped to God Ma wasn’t watchin’ me like this. But despite my sufferin’, I didn’t have any plans to let my promises to her die strapped to a table.

            “I need you to kill my daughter, and quite possibly my wife.”

            “What the hell are you sayin’?”

            “You’re a smart boy, Evans. Don’t make me repeat myself. I know it sounds awful, but if the coroners I spoke to this mornin’ are correct, you seem to have a taste for killin’ your own too, don’t you? Look, I need to win this election, and a kidnapping story with a happy ending,, just isn’t enough.”

            “Don’t you speak of my family with that mouth. My brothers died because—“

            “You thought it was necessary. What I’m tellin’ you right now is no different. Death wins elections, Liam. Sacrifices are necessary for success. Justice doesn’t run this world, power does, and I can’t have Hailey stirring up trouble when she gets to her mother’s. If she, or my wife go to the press about any of this, it’s over for me. I can’t have that after what I’ve done to get here.”  

            “Why can’t you do it yourself, Anderson? What’s wrong? Still love them too much?”

            A wiry wrist slammed down against my throat.

            “I loved them. I did. But when they both decided to leave me, I stopped. There are more lucrative things to love in this world than wives or daughters. Hailey’s headed to her mother’s now, the state police think she’s somewhere in the woods between here and Charlottesville, ‘about one to two days away on foot. My friends here are gonna drop you off at her mother’s before she gets there, and you’re gonna do what I told you.”

            “Your cops won’t even help on this one? Losing your grip aren’t ye’ senator?”

            He pinched his fingers around my windpipe, but didn’t even make a dent with those hands.

            “They don’t know about it, and they don’t need to know about it, son. This is between you, me, and the men in this room. If you do what I ask this time, there’s witness protection in it for you, and a lot more money than forty-five grand at the end of the line. You take the fall in the press, and I’ll make you disappear and live out the rest of your life drinkin’ pina coladas in South Beach. Do we have a deal?”

He’d have to beat an agreement out of me, if he wanted his way. Whether or not I had any real choice, I’d never take another bribe from him open-handed again.

            “She’s pretty, you know, that Hailey of yer’s. I’m sure your wife’s a looker too. Can’t say if I’ll kill them for ye’, but I’d be happy to have my way with them.”

Anderson clicked his goddamn fingers and I laughed ‘til my face went red. I liked the idea of making him angry, more than the idea of playin’ it safe. As far as I’d understood, he needed me alive, so what in the world was there to be afraid of?

            “How ‘bout we play another game, Evans? My friend here is gonna cut a nose hole in that bag over your face, and you’re gonna try to guess where we are. If you guess right, I’ll take off your blindfold. But if you guess wrong, I get to surprise you. Hope you’ve got a strong nose, son. Ready?”

The tip of the knife ripped a hole under my nostrils and I struggled to breathe in what I could.  Everything smelled of gasoline—gasoline and old wood. 

            “This is bullocks, Anderson.”

            “Well, since that’s not a guess. I’ll give you one more shot, except this time, I’m gonna make things harder. Hold your breath, son.”

The pigs pulled a towel over my nose and mouth quicker than I could blink. I sucked in what little air I could through the terrycloth only to hear the sound of liquid spilling down onto me from above.

Within seconds, I was drownin’ in gasoline again, sucking in and choking out mouthfuls of it, while the pigs pulled the towel tighter over my face.

            “Don’t kill him, fellas. Cut him loose and get him up. I wanna let him walk around a little bit before he guesses again.”

The second they sat me upright I spit-up cupfuls of gas and bile. I tried fightin’ whoever was holdin’ me, but my body collapsed in on itself, feelin’ heavier than a dead man’s from the lack of air. They dragged me around the room blind, holdin’ me up by the shoulders while I tripped on my feet.

I lost myself in the chaos of their laughter and the splashes of gasoline against the walls.  The smell got so strong I couldn’t keep myself from dry heaving at every breath. Anderson snapped his fingers again and I was pulled out into the cool night air.

The scent of wet grass, dirt, and damp gravel rushed through my nostrils, like a welcomed blessing. The hard crack of combat boots against my back sent me crashing face first into the mud. They pulled my bloodied wrists behind me and tied them together again, despite my strugglin’.

            “Last chance, Evans. What’s your guess?”

            “I don’t know—“

            “Oh, but you do. I’ll give you a hint—Daddy’s home.”

            With a flick of his wrist, Anderson tore the bag away my face along with my sanity.

            “Give your brother my thanks, I wouldn’t have known about this place without him leadin’ the way. Light it up, boys!” He said.

            I stopped livin’ right then.

             Stopped breathin’.

             Stopped thinkin’. 

             Everything stopped.

             Everything but Anderson’s men and their matches.

             Everything but the flames burnin’ up my family’s home.

             Everything but the sound of my father’s screaming. 

             Everything but the sound of my own.