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Infinity.
There was always too much.
I could have filled a pool and drowned myself in the seconds I couldn’t sell, trade, or barter. I was forever accumulating infinities until it was all I had spilling through my fingers, an endless supply of time.
I tossed the unsmoked cigarette into the bowl of sand I’d scooped earlier from the lakebed. It joined the other crushed butts and scattered ashes. I stared at the foul habit that had followed me home and sighed into the fading afternoon.
Bad habits seemed to be all I had left.
Bad habits and time I was losing at an alarming rate on the outside. Out in the real world with no one monitoring my every move, time evaded me. There was never enough. Days slipped into afternoons that plummeted into dusk. I kept blinking and the time kept shifting, and I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know how to fall into step with the minutes running from me.
Maybe I was losing it.
The uncles often spoke of inmates who couldn’t handle the chaos of the real world after doing years behind bars. Adjustment became a drug that wound up sending them back or ending their lives, depending on the person. I told myself I wouldn’t be like that. I was a Medlock. Weakness just wasn’t in our DNA.
Yet, I stood on the back patio of my parent’s summer lodge, watching as another sunset mocked me into oblivion.
I snorted at the irony and peered up at the glistening blue and liquid gold rippling in the distance. The tiny island drifting at its very heart seemed to beckon a visit, but for what purpose? It was a lump of sand. It held no purpose for me. There was nothing there. Nothing I couldn’t easily get staying exactly where I was.
I eyed the carton ofVirginia Slimswith its last four non-menthol cigarettes. A yellow lighter peeked out from amongst the foil, cheap and barely working. I probably should have felt bad for stealing them off some kid at the gas station. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but his punk ass attitude had pissed me off. Little shit had cut me off at the coolers, grabbed the last bottle ofPepsithen had the audacity to smirk and say,“Better luck next time, old man.”He was lucky I didn’t knock his picket fence teeth down his throat. But I held my patience and temper, reminding myself I just got out of prison for murder, and I wasn’t going back for some mouth breather.
I grabbed aCokeand got into line behind him. I watched him empty his pockets of all its contents and count out three dollars in loose coins. I snagged the pack when he bent down to pick up a scrap of crumpled paper that slipped out of his fingers.
I like to think I taught him a valuable lesson that day — don’t be a dick, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
I stuffed the pack into the back pocket of my sweats, kicked in my chair, and started inside mind fiddling with the idea of a greasy, extra cheesy grilled cheese sandwich when I was interrupted by a shrill ringing that echoed through the cavernous space. Part of me wished I could unplug the damn thing, but I also knew I couldn’t without the full wrath of my parents raining down on me.
It was part of our agreement. I could stay at the lodge but the demon machine stayed on. Father insisted the orders came from both him and Mother, but this had Mother all over it. I knew she worried I was sitting in darkness wallowing in my own self-pity.
I wasn’t.
Did I regret losing all those days and months of my life? No. I would do it again. Family meant sacrifice. Protecting the people I loved was my job as the eldest sibling and heir.
Did I know how to return to regular society? Also no. That was proving to be harder than I expected. I knew I would eventually have to. I had an empire to run and business that needed my attention. But the idea of being closed in by people again made my skin crawl.
Confinement in itself taught everyone something about themselves. I learned I didn’t like being closed up with other people. I didn’t like having to always be on alert, always watching my back. I hated the silence that wasn’t actually silence. I hated the coldness that seemed to radiate from the very walls. I hated the emptiness, not just of my cell, but my very essence. I was surrounded by hundreds of other men, someallies, majority of them not, but there was a profound absence that echoed at night when I would try to sleep.
The uncles who were not related to me by blood called that feeling the missed fuck.
“It’s because you miss having a wet pussy to slide into at night,”Bronzo, a shriveled husk of a skeleton with too much hair everywhere had wheezed from his side of the cafeteria table.“You should ask your dad to send you a playmate while you’re here.”
I wasn’t going to do that.
For one, I wasn’t about to casually call my Father and request a woman to be sent to the trailers for me once a week for a conjugal. He would do it, but the idea of someone being sent to me like some sacrificial lamb filled me with a thick coating of cringe I couldn’t stand.
But that wasn’t entirely it.
There was a much larger reason I refused to acknowledge even to myself, a reason I had no right hanging on to.
I snatched up the phone. The cold linoleum pressed into the soles of my feet as I bought the receiver to my ear.
Alexander Medlock greeted me from the other end. His dark, baritone sent a comforting wave rolling through me, the comforting blanket of a parent.
“How are things?”
I tossed the cigarette pack down on the table mounted on the wall next to the phone. “Same as yesterday.”
I heard a grunt and I knew he knew nothing could possibly change for me in twenty-four hours in the middle of the Rockies, but I also knew my mother wouldn’t accept that response without proof.
