Eat'em (14 page)

Chapter
30

Big Mike brushes by a group of prison guards prepared to escort me from the small lockup to the trial. He straightens each piece of his suit they touch as he squeezes through without so much as an excuse me. His chubby face lights up when he sees me, as it always does, his red cheeks burning brighter.

This is the most embarrassing part of each day. I’m in a small enclosure unfit for a rabid beast. My bunk has a small plastic coated mattress; my bookshelf has novels by Dean Koontz, Steven King, Christopher Moore, James Dashner, and several others; as well as books on the philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, and Thoreau; dangling from the ceiling are a multitude of sticky flytraps and car fresheners intended to conceal the unpleasant aroma from the squat stainless steel commode in the corner of the cell. The scent ranges from slightly tolerable to absolutely humiliating. Today it’s tolerable.

“Jacob, baby,” Mike says with a toothy grin, “how are they treating you, pal? Good? Good! I’ve got good news.”

“Good news is good,” I say. “And I’m fine. The hospitality is more than gracious.”

“Yeah right,” he peeks into my cell. “There anything you need? More books? Smelly stuff?”

“Movies!” Eat’em says. The little demon ascends the cage in a mock cirque du soleil routine, his tail whips from one bar to the next, pulling him from a lower platform to a slit in which food used to be delivered before the new expansion was complete.

Outside my micro-domicile lies a cafeteria style dining facility with proper cooks and a fully staffed kitchen, there’s a gym with fitness coaches and a theater that plays films only a few months out of regular circulation. These amenities are the result of men like Mike who have a certain political power, which forces the state to throw tax payers’ money at facility improvements as opposed to fattening the pockets of those who’d mistreat all the poor murderers and rapists keeping me company.

“And…” Eat’em continues, “a vending machine, yes! With rip its and RockStars!”

“The only thing this place is missing,” I say, “is a sauna and an Olympic size pool.”

“Can’t do anything about the sauna,” Mike says, “but word I hear, there’s a big push for a swimming pool, so that one ain’t so much a stretch. Tell you the truth, you hang out here long enough, I’m sure I can get you that sauna too. Which brings me to why I’m in such a good mood. Did you notice?”

“Sure didn’t,” I say, “You’re always a bundle of joy.”

“Shut up,” Mike says. “I got wind that this here is going to be a while. You got the media attention on you now, boy, and that’s going to make ol’ Gomey want to take his sweet ass time on this one. With the world watching, he’s going to want to impress. He’ll be coming swinging now.”

“This is a good thing?”

“Hell yeah it is!” Mike snaps at the cluster of guards. “You going to let my client out or just sit there like a damned fool? Andale amigo. Jake,” he turns back to me, “I told you, all we got to do is outlast this guy. Patience. The longer this takes the better for us. The district attorney will be grasping straws now to keep this thing going. And the more details he can convolute this thing with the more these guys are going to forget what matters.”

“What matters?”

“The facts,” Mike smiles. He wraps his big arm around my shoulders as I’m let out and handcuffed by a burly looking guard with eyes a colorless grey; silver under the flickering fluorescents. Mike says, “The law don’t care if you’re motivated by this or that, heroism or psychopathic episodes. Don’t care. But they don’t know that. The longer we keep this ball rolling the more time we have to convince them we need you.”

Eat’em rides behind my head, a foot on each shoulder. He grabs my hair and leans back, singing as we walk the row of cells filled with higher morale than any prison in the country.

“We’re going to take every tragedy from now until that final verdict and we’re going to tie them into this infection of yours,” Mike says.

“I wish we wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but we will, Jacob. From now until ‘not guilty.’”

The courtroom is my red carpet. Outside this place I’m plain as any person could be. I never wore a suit or a tie or attended a poetry reading in a cardigan with a scarf or ascot, nor have I ever been the life of the party, the center of attention, the guy that everyone wants to be around. Valentine carries that role among the Brook boys, and I take my place in the corner of the room, where nobody pays any mind. Here, I’m a vaudeville act. I’m Velma Kelly of the musical Chicago. I’m a sensationalized killer on display for gawkers and admirers.

Nobody cared about this case months ago, but something changed. Perhaps the killer of the year already faced their sentence. Maybe whatever high profile trial that normally draws the public eye is in the wings or the verdict hit and the people are now bored, need something new and exciting, and somehow I’m it. I am the corrupt ball of light the world cheers and jeers. The newest flavor for the ravenous palate of public scorn.

Mike guides me through an entourage of flashing cameras and steely reporters hidden beneath a smorgasbord of cosmetics to make them standout on a camera. They scream questions at me and accusations. Anything to get my attention. Mike warned me it would be chaos. Chaos is organized compared to this.

Eat’em poses and waves as we press through the crowd. One statement halts my step:
They say you’re the devil!

“Let’s go,” Mike says, pushing my back with one hand as he waves off the reporters with the other. I’m led, unchained, toward the same comfy front row seat to the play that will decide my future. Mike sits beside me.

“Who says I’m the devil?” I ask. It’s a stupid question, but the accusation brings an icy chill to my veins. Sure, for months I’ve known the world thinks of me as a criminal, but now the frenzy of vindictive citizens set on sacrificing me to alleviate their disdainful hearts – it casts a shadow on my life I don’t know how to handle. Even if word spread that I told nothing but the truth, I would still be considered the cause. And with my only true witness being an aloof demon, how am I to react to being the devil? Had my sidekick been a seraph would my circumstances be any different?

Mike scratches his nose as he leans in and whispers in my ear. “Things have gotten a little weird since more folks are starting to watch this thing. People are seeing little glitches in the footage when the camera’s on you. Say it looks like film blur, something stupid, it’s asinine. Some think it moves around… conspiracy theory shit. It’s nothing. But people want to see it like it’s a big deal or something.”

“I told you…”

“Shh, shhh, sh,” Mike says. “Enough of that nonsense. All you have to worry about is that it isn’t part of this case. The district attorney can’t use it and even if he could, he wouldn’t. He’d look like a damned fool, like he was trying to convince us of aliens.”

“But what if…”

“We’re not bringing your imaginary friend into this case, Jacob,” Mike’s forehead creases with a raised brow. And I wonder, what
if
Eat’em had been an angel? Mike says, “Let them conspire. Drop the demon. The case will win or lose with this virus of yours. If we can make it real to them, we can get you out of this mess. The demon will land you in a straight jacket and a padded cell.”

Gomes looks far more presentable than he has over the past few weeks. The steady decline in his level of give-a-damn shot up overnight. He’s dry-cleaned, clean-shaved, and clean-cut. A file that’s downright encyclopedic has replaced the thin folder he brought to the last session. He sets up for a presentation as Judge Brentt stifles the spectators in a method that’s more “Shut up” than “order in the court.”

“Gomes is going to go over crime scenes,” Mike says. “He hopes to start this fiasco off with some grizzly imagery to get the mob in a lynching mood. I don’t want you making a face. Not one emotion better come out of you. For you, these aren’t crime scenes; they’re the fields of battle. And warriors are disciplined. Keep that in mind, huh?”

I nod. The commotion fades to a few stray whispers.

Mike pats my shoulder, almost smacking Eat’em’s hind end, resulting in a shrill “Watch it, yes!” from the demon as he scrambles to higher ground.

“Don’t worry about what he does,” Mike says as he rubs the tension from my trapezoid. “Tonight, we’re going to show them exactly what your eyes can do.”

Chapter 31

Val danced around like a court jester, his deceivingly muscular arms swaying back and forth as he stared at me with a grimace not even a coward would fear. He wore a blue and white wrestling singlet, which he barely fit all his body parts into, and a set of ear guards that could hardly be seen beneath the wild fire mop of hair growing off the top of his head. He looked like an overconfident cartoon, but beneath the goofy outfit and the so-freckled-he’s-kinda-tan skin was a scrappy little fighter who had put embarrassed me in a fight on more than one occasion.

“Come on, Orphan,” Val said, “It’s time to show me exactly what you can do.”

I didn’t know what was more embarrassing, Val’s wardrobe or mine. Not having the middle school wrestling outfit Val held onto for this precise moment, I wore thigh-high bright yellow running shorts and a black and white ball tee that had gone out of fashion only moments after it was ever in fashion. Then I wore tube socks since I didn’t have the right shoes for match.

This would be embarrassing enough if we were somewhere secluded, but no… Val found it necessary to drag me out in public for this humiliating display.

We were in the school’s basketball gym, which doubled for an assembly center. In the corner of the room were a few mats, so old the edges rolled up and peeled. They were stiff and not much better suited for floor exercises than the wood gym floor. A few weight machines and a punching bag on a rope took up even more of the space we needed. And at this very time of night, a time Val promised me we’d have the gym to ourselves; there wasn’t an area not in use.

Some guy punched the bag, some others rotated on a squat machine, a game of five on five took up half the gym and the other was being used up by a couple kids playing horse. To top it off a second floor running track circled the entire court, and there were a number of very pretty girls staring down at us with the completion of each and every lap.

“I’m serious, Jake,” Val said. “If you’re going to break into peoples’ houses in the middle of the night with your mind set on some vigilante justice… bare-handed, I might add… then you at least need to know how to fight.”

He grabbed my wrist and I shrugged away. I was a bit more concerned about appearances than a guy with an invisible demon should be, but even someone regularly accused of talking to himself still has his pride.

“Because, if you think I’m going to dawn a cape and follow you on a spree of violence,” Val continued, “you’ve lost your mind.”

“Oooo,” Eat’em turned from a mirror used for aerobics exercises. “We should get capes, yes?”

“Could you not speak so loud,” I said to Val.

“You afraid someone’s going to hear me?” He asked.

“Yes. Kinda.”

Val grabbed at my wrist again and I pulled away again. “I could show these guys a video of you killing someone with your bare hands and they wouldn’t care enough to watch it.”

I tugged at the crotch of my shorts. Every step I took was another inch they crawled up my thighs. If I didn’t change back to my pants soon, I’d be leaving the gym in dental floss.

“I’d watch it!” Eat’em said. “But I wouldn’t believe it.”

“This is stupid,” I said for the fiftieth time since Val told me he wanted me to show him how to fight. “I don’t need you teaching me how to wrestle.”

He grabbed my wrist again.

This time when I pulled back, he dropped to one knee and swept his other leg around me in an arc. Using my momentum and slippery socks against me, Val pushed me headlong over my feet. I landed hard on my back and my scrappy uncle climbed toward my head and grappled me into what felt like some sort of self-inflicted chokehold. He wrapped my arm around my head so tight that I felt like I was about to break my nose with my own bicep. Before I had a chance to react, Val squeezed the air out of me, forcing me to breathe through the sweaty fabric over my armpit.

I had my head turned one way, my arm pulled the other. My legs twisted uselessly searching for some sort of leverage to shake my redheaded uncle off.

Worse yet, the musky uncirculated gym air felt cool as it rode up my shorts where I undoubtedly gave the giggling trio of girls running on the upper floor a show nobody paid to see.

“Is this how you’re going to fight, Jacob?” Val asked.

“He wishes he fought like that, yes,” Eat’em laughed. He pounded on the mat three times and shouted, “Ding! Ding! Ding!”

Though, I was the only one who heard Eat’em announce my defeat, I was certain by the awkward silence and muffled laughter that the rest of our audience agreed. Val had my head cranked so far into his chest that all I could see was the white and blue spandex as it faded into blackness.

“Alright!” I tried to scream. “I get it.”

Val loosened his grip. “What was that?”

“I get it,” I coughed, “okay. I need to learn to fight.”

He tightened his vice-like grip until my right arm wrapped so snuggly around the front of my head that I could bend my elbow at the back of my head and just about hook my finger into my lip. He had me bent up like a practiced contortionist. Except, I wasn’t a practiced contortionist, and it felt like my arm was a pound of pressure away from snapping in three different places.

I tapped the mat rapidly with my other hand, hoping for Val to relieve some pressure so that my last breath on earth wouldn’t be a whiff of my own underarm.

“Weak,” Eat’em said.

“You’re an idiot, Baby Jake,” Val said. “This isn’t about learning to fight.”

He let me go and all the air rushed back into my lungs - repugnant, but beautiful.

“This is to show you, you can’t fight.”

I rolled to my back and cautiously looked over my shoulder, expecting an audience. Nobody seemed to care.

“You’re not a fighter, man,” Val said. “If I can get you in a hold like this…”

“I wasn’t ready,” I said.

“And what if you aren’t.”

“What if I have to be?” I sat up and plucked my shorts from my thighs.

“At least be prepared,” he helped me to my feet. “Use a weapon or something. A gun. A taser. Pepper spray? Anything.”

“Maybe pepper spray,” I said before Val put me on my back again. Again, because I wasn’t ready.

“You need to wake up, Jacob,” Val said.