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“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 akid.
“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 fuckingtouchhim 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 reallyhavekilled 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.”
“Zack, you’re crying now. It’s okay.”
He angrily rubs his cheek. “I’mnot.”
“I’m going to help you, but first, you have to help me.”
He steps forward, raising the knife, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looks even younger than his age, which is saying a lot. He looks like a baby as his eyes shine red. When he raises the knife, I shake my head. “Zack—”
Then he slowly brings it down to my other hand, sawing at the rope.
“I don’t want to look,” he says. “Can you do your feet?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen dead bodies before,” he says, breaking my heart, “but I don’t want to look.”
“You don’t have to.”
After cutting my legs loose, I stand and almost fall, my center of balance completely off.
“Here.” Zack offers me his arm. “I can help.”
