Prologue and Chapter One

A Chapter by Robert Brooks

Prologue - Sic viri aliena est qui natus

The man’s eyes blinked open, and any ephemeral mirth he may have had at the irony of his situation was instantly overwhelmed by the nauseating realization that his hands were bound behind him.

Seated, and not necessarily uncomfortable, the man wanted to scratch at the two little puncture wounds on his neck, but couldn't. Like one fighting through sleep paralysis to escape an unwanted dream, he had to focus hard to wrap his mind around his new world. He struggled to ascertain. Clearly he was in a warehouse, or more specifically in an office in a warehouse. Or maybe it was some sort of former power plant? Outside an indoor window he could make out tubing of some kind, with some hints of valves and junction boxes. There was a huge, thick door as well, leading God knows where. The floor was cement and had a look of hundreds of hours of pallet rollers and slip resistant shoes. It didn't quite look industrial. It also didn’t look as if it had seen activity in a long time. But he had the feeling that wherever he was, it was not now nor ever had been open to the public. The smell was as best he could imagine what an abattoir was: foetid, deathly, and inexorably offensive. Far past something dead and rotting, this odor was more like the insides torn out of something terrified and left on the floor for weeks. He had no idea if it was night or day. Apprehension joined his nausea.

Inside, he could more clearly make out a rolling drink cart like airliners use immediately to his left front side. On the cart was a discarded Sky vodka bottle, slightly cracked, on its side, and a laptop, open and on, with an image frozen on it. This image had the wavy distortion so common of frozen video images, but was clearly and immediately recognizable as that stock of countless YouTube virals and evening news stories: the four panel convenience store security video. In that image it was very clearly night time outside of the convenience store.

Uh oh.

In front of him stood another man, forty-something, with earnest, brown eyes, - serious, but only for now - thickset (though the man in front of him would say that’s temporary, too, as he has for decades), with vaguely appealing, slightly feminine features. On his face were the remnants of a smirk that never entirely left, an unconsciously raised left eyebrow, and a jutting lower lip made comically and unintentionally pouting by his current, contemplative, expression. He wore slacks (slacks?!), and a reasonably nice if old Polo shirt, all underneath a well-worn dark tan leather jacket. His salt and pepper hair was neatly coiffed, but really more because it was short and that’s the way it always was rather than any real attention or care. The standing man was by contrast with the seated man’s current situation and surrounding utterly un-intimidating and decidedly... normal. With bound hands and in a darkened semi-industrial setting, the seated man would have chuckled at the incongruity of the scene, were he not a participant. Would have….

“Hello Charley. My name is Tony. I want to thank you for your time, today.” Urbane. No accent. Well-spoken.

Now the man did laugh out loud, if briefly. He looked around. He could tell that he was in a break room; an auxiliary of whatever building he was in; it was not a command center. The chairs within, including the one he was seated in (bound to) were the standard lightweight folding chairs omnipresent at weddings, conventions, and fish fries across decades of Americana. In fact, he probably could have moved, or at least hopped around, in the chair by just throwing his weight a little, but for some reason his legs failed to respond to even his most basic of mental requests. On the opposite wall, not too far from him, the man saw a paper sign, printed on several sheets of paper from some computer word processing program. The words disturbed him somehow, but didn’t entirely make sense.

The seated man - Charley - cleared his throat. “Yes.” Swallowing. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir.” Charley’s last line was delivered with an ersatz-refined Southern accent, like from a Civil War general; maybe it was a bit of a projection of his Porter, TX area upbringing and residence. Or maybe it was an awkward attempt to infuse a certain decorum and gravitas into a proceeding which was on some level was clearly and frighteningly very worthy of such. Given the seemingly genteel nature of their introduction against his - let’s face it, Charley thought - ominous predicament, it seemed oddly apropos. He became curious, but not so much as to actually want to remain where he was. Charley kicked against his bindings, but his legs, which seemed to hurt palpably, immobile as they were, were AWOL.

The standing man,Tony, twinkled his eyes a little as the smirk remnants blossomed to a genuine smile. Tony’s face had a warm, imploring look; friendly, even as it carried with it shades of a scientist reflecting upon a potentially successful experiment. Tony, not quite six feet tall and looking like a linebacker past his prime, sat down with an odd, even entertaining grace upon a bar stool in front of Charley, drawing his legs up to the top rung, hunching over to study a clipboard he held on his lap like a play director studying lines for the next class of incoming high school freshmen.

“Charley, we are here today to discuss potential disciplinary action on behalf of your conduct dated the 5th of this month. That’s exactly a week ago, by the way.” Tony’s right hand was rubbing the back of his head absentmindedly as he pursed his lips in concentration. Still hunched over, Tony pivoted his head to the side, such that it was cocked at an immense angle as he stared forthrightly at Charley. “Do you understand what I am telling you, sir?”

Now Charley could speak, because this was some kind of joke going on here, and not a very funny one at that: “Mister, what the f**k are you talking about?”

In whatever later he had left to perceive as later, Charley would reflect that the softish middle-aged man in front of him moved from his chair very quickly, and with a shitload of precision. In the blink of an eye, and damned near silently, Tony dismounted his bar stool, alit with two planted feet, and - while holding his clipboard in his left hand - brought an arcing, uppercut, roundhouse slap powerfully and squarely on the area between Charley’s left jaw and the nape of his neck. The impact was so profound that Charley’s chair launched, upended, and along with Charley, landed sideways on the cement deck of the office.

“Wrong ANSWER, sir!”

Holy living F**K, thought Charley, scrambling to recover thought even as he gasped for breath. Okay, okay, he thought. This guy’s really, really effin’ mad at me or he’s a lunatic, and in any case this game just changed from really bad to way worse. Charley’s left ear was ringing, and he was gagging, fighting consciously for breath through deliberate wheezes. No longer apprehensive, Charley was now scared as hell.

Charley knew that Tony had been out of his chair because of the immense pain in the left side of his neck and the fact that he was now horizontal on the floor. But even as he blinked focus and eyesight back into his reality, forcing himself to meter his breathing, he saw Tony back on his stool, feet this time on the lower rung. Tony had the same imploring, urbane look, but his nostrils were now flared, his hands on his hips, the left one still holding the clipboard. Tony put the clipboard under his left arm and flexed his left hand - the one that didn’t do the hitting, rapidly and repeatedly. His right hand he shook like one who’s just hit a brick wall. He was shuddering slightly, possibly in some pain, even as he held his perch atop the stool.

Panting, and more than a little panicked, Charley, on the floor, regarded the man standing over him. Lunatic? Maybe. Strong? Most definitely. But wait..., something about this guy. Even perched above me, affecting some sort of elevated tone, some sort of affirmative reflection upon the proceedings that he thinks he’s holding. He’s trying a little too hard for some sense of... pageantry? Decorum? Perhaps Charley didn’t use these actual words in his head, but the feelings such words would imbue were there.

Charley started quietly to himself: Holy s**t, this guy’s never done this before!

And thus started an unlikely, macabre blind date.

…....

Lifting the bound Charley chair up from the floor - with one arm - Tony faced him toward the screen, then resumed his perch atop the stool. Tony exhaled a smile. “Really now. You know why we’re here.” Tony was now back under wraps. Pleasant. Solicitous. Let’s take a look at some evidence, shall we?”

Tony reached over from his perch and hit something on the keyboard.

On most levels of his mind, Charley knew what was about to happen; he recognized the setting represented in the four little blocks well enough as a place that indeed he had been a week earlier. It was a little like watching a video of one’s self in a marching band or on a football team long after the actual event; the viewing thereof was detached, more intellectualized than the actual participation. And maybe that’s why Charley sat with passive fascination as he watched himself walk through that convenience store’s doors late at night and brandished a pistol to the store’s current and only occupant, young John Lafayette.

Screen One, the upper left quadrant of the laptop, showed Lafayette behind the register, looking down while he faced the camera and the front of the store, initially surprised but not necessarily frightened, his arms then raising much like a prisoner of war, but with a more casual, conciliatory manner. Screen two, from the back right hand corner of the store, over aisles of bean dip, locally made jerky, pain killers, just-in-case children’s toys, and scores of other bric-a-brac, showed the same from over Lafayette’s left shoulder. He was good sized, maybe six two, bearded, and clearly of an easygoing nature, especially in light of his youth. Wearing the generic corporate green smock of this recently franchised store, he shook his head slowly as he said something, mute in the recording. On his outstretched, left hand, one could barely make out a wedding band. In front of Lafayette, and behind his register, and behind the very intense man holding a pistol, were the front windows of the convenience store, their newly painted white sills already gathering dust from the East Texas roadside, the parking lot, no cars, and largely blackness. For his part, Charley was wearing a flannel shirt, wife-beater T-shirt, sunglasses, an AMF Tuboscope hat, and bluejeans. Charley’s hair was stringy and longish, with a dishwater hue.

At this point during the video, Tony subtly looked away from the screen and glanced sideways at Charley, noting with wry amusement that he was wearing the exact same thing now, here in this room, here at his... moral test for compliance.., as he was in the video a week ago. Tony thought to himself that, at least on the outside, Charley was straight out of central casting. In his speech, mannerisms, dress, values, body hair, and hygiene, Charley was emblematic of this area of Texas. At the same time pathetic and sympathetic, and evocative of the nauseating common clave bullshit celebrated in so much music and custom. There were thousands of Charlies within scant miles of Tony. They were like spiders; one was never less than five feet away from one, or so it seemed. Naturally they drove a truck they couldn't afford. Aggressively at that; those high headlights incinerating your rear view mirror? Charley. Better yet it would be diesel, so that they could leave the God-damned thing idling all day in the parking lot, preferably with the exhaust pipes aimed at the occupied store/office building/park behind. Naturally as well they took huge pride in their common sense, which they of course deduced that they had since they couldn't read a book worth a s**t. The Charlies of this area infested local talk shows and news shows with a sickening and persistent regularity. They admonished snot-ridden, imbecilic children in Golden Corrals. They peppered the bars and restaurants. They stank up rest stop bathrooms. Somehow they met women. They bred more Charlies.

Tony caught himself imperceptibly and quietly brought his gaze back to the screen. Where the hell did that come from? For Christ’s sake, you yourself were born in Herman Hospital, man. Tony was appalled, no wait, appalled but with guarded fascination by the primordial ferocity of his mental rant. Of course, Tony also understood that it was necessary, just like a quarterback donning shoulder pads before a playoff game, or a boxer taping his wrists.

Back to the screen. Screen Four, lower right, showed now that Charley had walked Lafayette to the back of the store. Charley’s back was facing this camera, but it was evident there was a negotiation of some kind going on. Charley had produced some plastic zip ties. Behind the sales binnacle, away from public view, next to the stand-up freezers chock full of mostly Blue Bell ice cream and frozen dinners, Lafayette turned away from Charley, his arms extended. Charley held his handgun in his left hand, flat and sideways up against the clerk’s back, and with his right hand secured the zip tie around his wrists.

“You know, had he been a hero here, he might just have had a chance. But really we’re all just taught to give folks like you what you want peacefully, as that is really all you want. Just the money. Isn’t that so, Charley?” Tony’s gaze at Charley was strangely preoccupied, almost dreamy. His fixed a look on the bound man made it obvious he was expecting some sort of response.

“I..., uh, don’t really know what to say,” Charley stammered.

Tony’s detached visage morphed - elegantly, almost - into a dark glower. “Not good enough,” he hissed just barely above audible hearing, his eyes fervent, focused, and boring into Charley with an intensity that the - defendant? - felt in the bottom of his stomach.

“BACK to the screen, though...” once again exited and friendly Tony chirped loudly as suddenly broke off his gaze and slewed to the computer screen. The transition shocked the already unnerved Charley. He now shivered perceptibly.

During their exchange they missed the part where Charley enacted his first act of treachery on poor Lafayette. The store clerk was now face down on the floor just outside the back freezers, bound wrists, looking surprised but unhurt, and angrily shouting something over his shoulder at his captor. Charley, clearly possessed of wiry strength, was rapidly duct taping Lafayette’s ankles together.

“Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. Looks like our young cashier got a little more than he bargained for when he decided not to resist, didn’t he? On the other hand, is there anything duct tape can’t do? I tell you that if they make the stuff edible, somehow, it will become the most perfect substance in the universe.” Friendly Tony stayed in character as he stared reflectively at the opposite office wall. “Well, maybe second to meatloaf, I mean....”

Charley stared slack-jawed at Tony. Both men in the room knew damned well what was coming on that screen, and Tony’s cheerful and mercurial disposition disturbed Charley to no end. Charley’s breath came in small shudders.

“Ah, but every good battle plan..., right Charley?” Tony tapped a pen against his cheek. “Poor lovely Melodie.”

Screen four now showed a twenty-something dark-haired woman, pretty in a meek way yet haggard from what looked to be a long evening’s work in a local restaurant. Almost certainly she was bound for home after closing. She stood patiently at the register holding a package of gum and a candy bar in her hand.

Screens one and four showed Charley and Melodie Newman simultaneously in shock as their eyes met: Charley was on his way to the register and wasn’t counting on company, given the remote New Caney, TX location and the Monday 3:00 time. Sadly for Ms. Newman, Charley regained his senses first. He raised his pistol and did an end run around the customer sealing off her exit. Melodie backed away, toward the left end of the store, dropping the most expensive package of gum in her hard-working, guileless history.

All four screens now showed intermittently the addition and binding of the second inmate in what was now well beyond attempted robbery. Newman and Lafayette were both face down, arms and legs bound. Lafayette had a look of quiet resignation, while Melodie was clearly objecting and pleading, likely noisily, angry and terrified. Both were side by side, but Lafayette had his head turned away from his fellow capture.

“Got the situation in hand, don’t you, sir?” Tony simply turned his head toward Charley now, stoking his Adam’s apple, lips pursed, sitting upright now. “Admittedly, it’s not the perfect crime, but you have immobilized the witnesses, and realistically who’s gonna search for you all that hard given the few bucks you’re going to get out of that register?” An absentminded swipe at the screen with his other hand. A few seconds pass, then: “Who, Charley?” Imploring look. Smirk. I mean, you’re a pretty generic guy, you could just change your looks and sort of blend in for a while.” Or just change your f*****g clothes from time to time. Tony blinked at that thought. “So why not just stop there? Why not just go on take the money and run?” Tony said that last with the tempo and style of the old Steve Miller tune. “Why not?”

Cleared throat. “Uh, in all honesty I was sorta winging it. Guess I was down on my luck, is all, and, uh, not thinking straight.”

In some remote region of his mind, Charley’s subconscious gave itself a congratulatory Ah-ha! So THAT’S what the empty vodka bottle was for, as Tony gracefully picked up the bottle off of the cart with his right hand, double flipped it like a bartending juggler to his left hand, and then with a whipping motion crushed it with unbelievable speed and force directly into Charley’s face. Charley was quick, and so turned away so that his cheek and eye socket absorbed most of the blow, rather than his nose. Charley’s head whiplashed back and then forward again in milliseconds. In the quiet, almost tomb-like ambiance in the office, the loud shattering sound of such thick glass startled even Tony.

The last time Charley screamed so loud was when his father did the same thing to him, years and years ago, but with a belt. Charley’s face was a bloody explosion, already swelling visibly even through his now hitching screams.

“NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH!” came the bellow as he grabbed the bloody man’s hair to hold his face up to him. Tony’s face was grotesquely stretched, eyes blackened with a powerful, heated rush of hatred as he spat the words into the panicked, crying man’s face: “Yes, I KNOW that at some point that night you were no longer in control of your actions. I KNOW that you were temporarily insane and as such in the strictest sense maybe even not able to recognize right from wrong. I KNOW that your parents treated you like s**t and all the girls you ever met thought you were an odious weirdo. I KNOW that life never gave you a fair shake!”

Tony released the man’s hair and opened his hands, standing and then backing slowly away from Charley, clasping his hands in a prayer position in front of his pursed lips. His eyes glowed softly. He resumed, quietly. Whispering.

“But I also know that whatever broken machinery you have inside of you needs..., tending to.”

Tony bent over and straightened out his slacks with his hands, as if brushing off crumbs from a recent dinner. He was again peaceful. He sat back upon his perch, head cocked to the side as he continued, distantly: “you will resume looking at the screen now.”

Charley, sputtering, faced the computer screen if for no other reason than to avoid additional trauma. Charley was now an organism executing one its most basic of instincts: the avoidance of pain.

While Charley was suffering compensatory damage at the hands of Tony, the video continued to run. Charley had indeed opened the register and had cleaned out its contents. He had as well grabbed several packages of Pall Malls and stuffed them in his pockets. Now Charley merely stood motionless, immediately outside the binnacle, staring at the right side of the store, sunglasses hiding what must have been a vacant stare. After three full minutes, Charley, expressionless, turned toward the back half of the store and advanced slowly. Out of his front pocket - the one without any cigarettes in it - he produced a sheathed knife.

“You know, I did a little research, and if I’m not mistaken, that there is a Wusthof Classic Ikon 7-inch Fillet Knife, with sheath.” Tony turned his head to face Charley while keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. “That’s a really nice knife, Charley. I’m impressed.” Tony glanced at Charley and noticed that he was looking down at the floor. “Watch...” Tony growled, between clenched teeth. Charley’s eyes flicked up to the screen.

Onscreen Charley rounded the corner to the freezers, unsheathing his fillet knife. In one rapid, halting maneuver, Charley drove his left knee into the tailbone of Lafayette while simultaneously grabbing a handful of the man’s hair with his right hand for control. With his left hand, Charley thrust the blade between Lafayette’s lower ribcage and his right hip, piercing the right kidney and the diaphragm. The response was immediate: Lafayette’s prone body arched as if the convenience store floor he was face down on suddenly became electrified. While the recording featured no sound, the young clerk was very obviously screaming uncontrollably, at the top of his lungs. Charley pulled the knife out and this time thrust it between the cheeks of Lafayette’s buttocks, into - more or less - the rectum. He made a deliberate stirring motion with the knife before pulling it out and once again thrusting it under the ribcage. The clerk jerked spasmodically, and since his head was controlled by his assailant’s right hand, which pointed it toward the freezer doors, the camera angle didn’t show his full face. But anyone could see that young John Lafayette was sobbing, even as shock set in. The lower half of his smock was already changing color.

“Boy I don’t know about you, but I wig out completely when someone even slaps my back in that area. I couldn’t image getting skewered there. Repeatedly. And then there’s the idea that you quite literally shoved a knife up his a*s. To do what you just did, you really gotta wanna hurt someone.” A moment passed, and Charlie watched as Tony slipped again into a brief reverie, then: “I guess a man like you got a great big hole, right in the middle of ya. You can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” He spoke in an affected sing-songy lisping fake Southern voice, like Brando if Brando were raised in South Carolina. Charley never caught the movie reference of that last line. Tony crossed his arms and turned to face the murderer, and resumed, accent free. “I mean, look at poor Johnnie there. Even as his life force oozes out of him, he cries and you watch. Do you suppose he’s thinking about his mother? His wife? His young daughter? His God? What sort of thoughts can console when a hellspawned homicidal cracker is - for no real reason - destroying everything you were and are about, and in such a purposefully humiliating and painful manner?” Tony was now less jovial, or at least the pretense of joviality he had been fostering was ebbing.

Back in the store, Melodie only realized what was happening as Charley began his second thrust. Her eyes widened, but surprisingly she did not scream. Instead, she jerked into motion and started inchworming her way toward the back left of the store, alternately rolling, alternately inching away from all of the cameras. Briefly, she was out of view, but camera three caught a sunglasses carousel falling over, and Melodie crawled into view at the top of the screen three. She had a look of fierce determination.

Screen three now showed a panting Melodie on her side, on the floor of the back left section of the restaurant, swimming in a sea of sunglasses from the fallen carousel. With one final effort, she rolled over to lie on her left side, facing back toward the the freezers. Toward Charley, who was standing over the other side of his fading victim, regarding the fallen man with mixture of peace, vacancy, and fascination on his face. For his part, Lafayette looked to be murmuring. Probably he was praying. His blood now thoroughly soaked the skid free pads that lay outside the doors to the freezers and refrigerators.

Charley’s gaze, with the same expressionless malice, raised and fixed upon Melodie, who now panicked for real. She resumed her rolling away from the man and struck one of the left rear aisles such that some 30 weight oil and some filters rained down on her from the shelves above. But she didn’t feel it, and with her forward progress halted and her options apparently gone, Melodie, on her back amid home a/c filters, automobile cleaning supplies, and toilet brushes, bayed angrily and sorrowfully at the ceiling, tears streaming down her cheeks. Even the relatively low resolution of the security video captured her anguish as she turned her head, heaving breathlessly, to face her executioner.

Who wasn’t there. Charley had left the building.

While Ms. Melodie Newman struggled to update her senses, screen two showed Charles Delacroix Paganne II simply disappear into the parking lot in front of the store, and into the night.

Tony’s head was back at the precipitous angle as he stared now at Charley. His face had an almost exultant quality; his eyes held forth with quiet mania as they glowed like electric embers from the light of the screen. Tony looked supremely happy.

Encouraging, ironic whisper: “Almost, baby. Almost.”

Tony continued to stare his strangely feral, gleeful stare straight at Charley as screen two, after a a minute or so, changed with the light of what was clearly a pickup truck in the window outside the store, facing not into a parking spot, but exactly into the right angle to be more or less recognizable. On the front of the pickup truck, the poor resolution could just make out the first three letters of the license plate: XKH.... The final three numbers were unreadable.

The whisper continued: “2002 Dodge Ram Crew Cab, Silver, first three license plate numbers X,K, and H. Montgomery County”

Tony stifled a little as he choked over the word, triumphantly, still not looking at the screen. Quietly: “Oops.”

Tony inhaled. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Charles?” After another moment or two, Tony was back in his reverie. He stared at the corner of the room. Tony seemed no longer to care if Charley was watching. In fact, he wasn’t paying attention. He simply played with his lower lip in a twisting, comically erotic manner.

Screen two showed the driver’s side door opening rapidly and a very purposeful looking Charley barging through the front of the store again, such that within a matter of seconds all screens on the four part video showed some piece of the events which followed.

Melodie lay on the floor, exhausted and dazed. Charley moved with such speed and certitude that he was almost upon her before she even noticed that he was back in the store. Only in the final few seconds of her consciousness did she recognize the baseball bat Charley was carrying.

Tony, still in reverie, continued to look away and quietly clicked at his lower teeth with his thumbnail as the brutality onscreen continued. Charley’s first several overhead strikes found no purchase, as Melodie valiantly blocked and re-blocked with her slender arms, aided by terror and adrenaline. Once she even managed to grab and hold the bat, but Charley used his foot to scrape off the woman’s bound, bloody hands. Charley simply resumed swinging, overhead, like a railroad worker. A careful study of the video would have shown light, transient flecks of bone flying away from the scene of impact with each swing. Finally, with no structure left in her arms, and with no muscle to control them anyways, Melodie quickly rolled to her side and curled into a fetal position. She attempted to guard the side of her head with her shattered and bloody arms as the puffing Charley stopped swinging, walked around her to the other side, and quietly lined up his shot. It was over in a few seconds: Charley’s swings hit directly on Melodie’s head through her broken hands. Now blood flew with each strike. After a few rattling kicks from her legs, Melodie was no more.

Tony still remained silent, and continued to do so even over the course of the next ten minutes, as onscreen Charley barged out, picking up the dropped candy bar as he fled. He entered the truck, backed away, and launched into the night. Back in the office, the time which passed for the next several minutes may have been under some circumstances at the very least awkward, with a potentially homicidal yet engaging man proctoring a rather bizarre proceeding on behalf of another actually homicidal, if not so engaging man. But given that such proceeding involved a blood-soaked, bound defendant viewing a recently committed cold-blooded, yet oddly intimate atrocity, any awkwardness, or at least any acknowledgment thereof, was forestalled.

Tony’s quiet gaze shifted to the floor and stayed there even as Charley blinked through blood and glass to continue viewing, maybe out of curiosity, or maybe just to have something - anything - to distract him from his desperate circumstances. Tony never commented on, or even acknowledged screen two as it showed the distracted, loosely dressed middle-aged man appear in the front door from a black, decade-old sedan parked at the pump, stroll through and wander to the right back of the store, where he proceeded to vacantly eyeball the beer selection, and with a resigned look open one door and grab a six pack of sixteen-ounce domestic cans, turn away, and head toward the binnacle, shoulders slumped. The man even made it to the register, where he stood eyeing the front counter items with little thought for almost a full minute before blinking and swiveling his head languidly to both sides, looking for someone to assist with his purchase. On the man’s second swivel, he clearly recognized the pool of blood and the leg protruding from the back, near the freezers, but he didn’t yet move, or even drop the six-pack slung between his thumb and forefinger - he would never do that, you see. Eventually, he flatfootedly strolled to the scene, perhaps more little agog then shocked.

And there he stood, for minutes, in front of the still hot and putrid vision of carnage that lay before him, still fresh with panic and offal. He was deeply saddened yet not really horrified. Rather, the man with the beer simply began to search, head swiveling again. It was only seconds before his search stopped, his eyes locking in on camera two. Holding his gaze fixed on the camera, staring seemingly through the small pane and directly at the two men in their office cell, the man in the convenience store thoughtfully pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removed one, lit, drew, and puffed through a smile. Or not so much a smile. More of a smirk.

“Charles Paganne II, please stand.” Tony stifled a slight guffaw as he realized what he had just said, then “well, just pay attention then.”

Tony inhaled, closing his eyes and clasping his shoulders with his folded arms. He continued, looking at nothing in particular:

“You have been found wanting. You have failed to sufficiently explain why you would visit such incomprehensible pain upon two families. You have maliciously and selfishly robbed two people of their remaining years, which in all likelihood were abundant, and while doing so ensured that their final moments on this planet were of abject horror and acute loneliness. And it was loneliness, you know, for really their only company was you.”

Tony leaned forward. “I don’t care that that maybe somewhere and somehow researchers and/or scientists may have a name for whatever it is that motivated you to behave the way that you did. Oh no. You see, Charley, the broken machinery inside of you which caused such profound disaster for others at the very least must as well cause it for you, too. Right, Charley? Agreed? It’s a little like the Navy: maybe Captain Charles didn’t do it, but it happened on his watch, so he’s gotta take responsibility. Are you ready to take responsibility, Charley?” Tony doubted that Charley could recognize the slightly more sophisticated thinking behind the analogy he just set forth, but procedure was procedure. Tony removed something from his pocket.

“You will now face the jury.” Charley briefly felt like he had stuck is finger in an electrical socket, and then his world blackened.

….........

The man’s eyes blinked open, again.

Great… Now what?

Or, they would have blinked open had there been actual eyeballs over which to blink. Like when one’s tongue runs involuntarily over a newly missing tooth again and again, grappling and considering the newly missing body part, his eyelids squinched and flapped over that which was no longer there. His eyes, now ghastly maws, squirmed like fleshy, inchoate sphincters with nothing to hold in.

Charley snatched his arms up to rub his…, whatever, but could only summon a twitch " a ghostly memoir of that which almost everyone in history does without thinking " which did not actually rub anything. Charley’s arms had been removed.

Charley kicked spasmodically. His fight or flight response had been well and truly pegged at flank now and the consensus of his reeling mind was flight! Run. Anywhere. Just get away and re-evaluate. Like all of his bad dreams before, he’d wake up. God help him, please wake up….

But Charley’s legs were gone, too.

For a hysterical instant he thought of the Black Night in that Monty Python movie. He then rocked his head back to belly laugh for real, except that, with no vocal cords, the only sound escaping his throat was a guttural rasp, like a non-musician attempting the trombone for the first time, but with pathetic slurping noises as well. The sound was amusing, but for its appalling genesis. An unwitting passerby would have laughed, could there have been a passerby in this remote section of the East Texas Piney Woods, and would such passerby have not seen its source.

But Charley would never laugh at the sound: he was now deaf, the remains of what inner workings and hidden mechanisms his ears had once been now seeping down his neck, along with whatever acid had been used to liquefy them.

Mute, deaf, blind, immobile, terrified, and in immense pain, some fracture of Charley’s brain gathered that he still had his sense of smell. Forest. Deep. Cleveland? Hunstsville? The aroma was intense, especially given the lack of input from his other senses: dry pine needles and a hint of lukewarm water off in the distance. Maybe honeysuckle as well. Charley felt the wind activate something that should be the skin on his face, but oh my God that hurt too! Had Charley the ability to touch his face, he would have felt nothing but ablated scared awfulness, any last bits of feeling of which were made brittle and painful by the warm winds. Dear God, even my skin hurts. Charley, still seated but now in a wheelchair, simply sat, unable to do anything but regard.

Hours later, with nothing to do, and literally nowhere to go, Charley’s conscious seized upon his remaining sense of smell and nurtured it like the comforting toy for a beaten child. Memories rushed to his forethought through the calamity of his current situation - it is, after all, the sense of smell which interconnects directly to the limbic system, such that memories long ago lost spring instantly to mind with even a slight whiff. And Charley’s instantaneous memories were those from his childhood with his father, who was a mean m**********r if there ever was one, but did enjoy his fishing, and enjoyed having his boy along when he fished.

At tributaries that didn’t smell quite right, golf course lakes where maybe they shouldn’t have been, and under bridges of sun-bleached overpasses since he could remember, Charley recalled his father, who’d thankfully put down his belt for Fishing Time, especially when it meant that he could put a beer in his hand instead, who would use Fishing Time with his young son to illustrate the important things in life, like patience, and an appreciation for nature, and the proper protocol that was fishing and drinking. Mostly it was fishing for young Charley and drinking and anger for Charles Delacroix Paganne. It was during these times, times where Mr. Paganne wasn’t vomiting on the kitchen floor, screaming into a phone, “disciplining” the family dog, or having “quiet alone time” with Mrs. Paganne (which never sounded very quiet, alone, or happy for that matter), that young Charley could get as close as he ever would to embracing his dad. It was these times that the boy learned that there were things in life worth, if not loving, then at least liking.

Like the tomb-like silence that a lake can have when there’s only a wisp of the hot Texas wind in your face, and nothing else around for miles, and the lulling, echo-like quality the spoken voice can have around it.

Like the comical thickness the red clay can bunch up around your toes with when you try to walk a little too close to the water.

Like the lightly cracked wooden cane poles that they both carried with simple lines and hooks with freshly gored worms on them.

Like the pride he felt when his father first acknowledged genuine happiness with him as he hauled in his first catfish - all 14 inches of it. Sometimes you had to use a club, or a bat, to surprise the fish and then net them in.

Like that same fish he used to gut with his father, and many others at places like Lake Travis and Lake Houston.

Like that miserable slob he gutted at the store. That poor, miserable sonofabitch. Those sad sack fuckers.

Gradually, as the panic faded and the misery of his utter and literal bereavement crushed down upon his deteriorating mind like wet, discarded tar shingles, Charley would never reflect upon the unlikely circumstances which brought him and his ad hoc surgeon together, nor would he ever consider with fascination the the minor field surgery miracle which allowed him to stay alive while so disfigured; for example that just the femoral arteries in each leg - nearly a full inch in diameter - would when severed stroke him out in less than 20 seconds, or that the amount of extremely caustic acid which had come into contact with and in him in such a short period of time should have been fatal. He didn’t even think of his ungrateful b***h of a wife wherever the hell she was or his son whom he never saw very much anyways.

No, he recalled that sign that struck him when last he had more than one of his senses, and staring at it over the shoulder of that prissy but strong a*****e who glided in and out of sensibility while reading him the riot act:

Sentence served.

Chapter 1

As you cross south of Alvin on Highway 35, through all of the fading mini-strip centers ceding to the inexorable big boxes, through the casual mix of giant LED billboards and hand painted barbershop signs, past the evergreen local community college, and in general through a city struggling to hold on to its littleness, you’ll pass into an unsolicited pocket of solitude which never planned on being anything other than one leg of a journey between incipient Alvin and her bureaucratic big sister Angelton.

It’s in this respite, where names like Danbury and Liverpool bat sleepy eyes to travelers and commuters, that you’d be forgiven for missing out on an opportunity to stop your world briefly and look across uneventful but real landscape with your mind’s eyes. Not so much the trout fisheries which offer at least a conventional, however rustic, idea of peace. Certainly not the decades old roadside gas stations hoping their new brightly colored sheet metal will convince the aforementioned travelers and commuters to visit the dingy confines within and at least buy cigarettes, or beer and Lotto tickets. Rather, it’s the unremarkable flat fields of winter rye, rice, hay, cattle, and grass. The soil for the rice, requiring an often complex system of dikes and submersion, year round has a lightly biotic, loamy smell. That, coupled with the freshwater presence of the Brazos and Colorado River deltas, antiphonates with the nearby Southeast Texas Gulf Coast, vying for the nose’s attention. Add in the squinty-bright and often merciless Texas sun, which lights the fields in alternating shades of green, from pale olive to verdant Eire, even as it roasts them in its kiln, and you have the makings of an open-hearted, redolent, meditative simplicity.

But it’s important to actually stop here; you have to adjust your mind to the most local of time zones. Maybe pick a work day " and as well a day where none of the farmers is tilling or herding with their sonorous, horizon filling machinery, pull over, and head out into one of these fields. Summertime is good because the hay and grass get so hot that they have a fractured, bursting aroma which sometimes parallels the sensibilities and senses of the one actually experiencing such aroma; Southeast Texas in the summer gets quite hot, you see.

Whatever the case, the real beauty of the colossal fields between Alvin and Angleton, and areas even further south and west like Palacios and Blessing, is the utterly unassuming, work-a-day pleasantness of the beauty, and the fact that said beauty doesn’t worry all that much about whether or not you will perceive it as such, even as it hopes you’ll stay around for awhile. Perhaps you’d cross through here several times, or several scores of times, maybe on your way to party in Port Lavaca or Corpus, or to a court date in Angleton, before you really and truly dropped your guard and let the fields of green and the languid winds seep into your subconscious. Even then, it would likely be only as a post facto mental reflection from the air conditioned comfort of your office or bedroom. But that’s ok. The fields and the Texas sky will wait. This area of Texas, with its wide stark skies and persistent, breathy winds, is a subtle and acquired little perfection. Come as you are. There’s no hurry.

And for once feeling no hurry as he strolled through a summer field of hay, hands palm down and open at his side, Tony remained silent and motionless as he let the full force of the noonday heat push into his exposed arms and upturned face. Over the past decade or so, gnawing uncertainties seemed increasingly to be camping out in the hinterlands of his mind, such that these days they colored all aspects of his existence and removed the very pleasure from such existence. As a young man, Tony was the quintessential definition of laid-back, peaceful even (that is, when his inner smart-a*s wouldn’t rule his lips and the day). Through his younger years he lived with a profoundly intrepid, delightfully taciturn internal constitution whereby the world was something to be seen, tasted, and anticipated. There was mystery out there, almost always shrouded in dark, intense colors, and who knows what the people around the bend might say or do? Whatever it was, a celebration of something or someone would be in the offering, for that’s what life was. Life was a celebration of winning and pleasure.

But of late Tony was afraid of life. Furthermore, he was resigned to his fear of life. Maybe it was the two failed marriages. Maybe it was his one and only son who had long ago left him far behind. Maybe it was just that so much of what he touched seemed just to die on the vine. Possibly, he had mused, it was just that so much of life literally and figuratively hurt in a way that it never had. Tony usually pondered that last with the wry realization that, yes, he was just on the sunny side of fifty, and even falling down in the front yard hurt.

Whatever the reason, Tony’s internal demons one day arrived, set up shop, then multiplied, and finally sought and received a daily audience with him. Then they took control.. Then they voted him out.

Tony inhaled impossibly hot summer air.

But maybe not today, he thought. Maybe for now he and the demons had created an uneasy detente. He just wanted a little peace with them, after all. And of course, they’d want something in return.

“We may want to head back,” Joanna said from the side of the highway, balanced upon the other side of the ditch from the field, her backside resting lightly against the door of the black sedan behind her. “Tony? C’mon, sweetie. Sammie’ll be home in less than two hours,” she said with just enough volume for him to hear her, 30 yards away on the other side of a barbed wire fence.

Through a dreamy reverie this time not the result of a defense mechanism. Tony heard his lover’s voice.

Sammie, he thought. Samantha....

Back in the car, He and Joanna traded the usual good-natured stories, barbs, and bon mots that they almost always did when coming back from their... forays. They’d discuss music, politics, and silliness. Mostly silliness. Eventually, and inevitably, there would be tons of innuendo and double-entendre: one thing Jo and Tony both discovered in each other was a new-found appreciation for everything sexual, including and especially the more comical aspects of human sexuality. Together, they tacitly and explicitly shared a pact that most important in life was love and laughter, and then set out to get good at both. In all aspects of timing, both in the bedroom and around the dinner table, they shared masterful chemistry.

That is, whenever they could share chemistry.

That Tony had finally found the love of his life with a married woman was, by today’s standards, quaint, and maybe even old-school romantic. That this love was a woman married to another woman didn’t quite push it to the reality TV scene, but it did make for different set of conversational way-points.

“I kinda loved the fact that the A/C was out in our room.” Jo chimed. “I was so sweaty. I kept thinking of Rachael Ward in Against all Odds, only we were at a Palace Inn rather thanin an Aztec Palace.” Jo stopped brushing her hair long enough to throw her head back with congratulatory gusto. “Hah!” Back to brushing. “I kill me.”

“Hey, you know what I haven’t had in a long time, Maddow? Jo almost always referred to Tony by his last name, or some variation of it. “Dairy Queen!” “God, whatever happened to those places? They don’t exist anymore, I guess. Well, except maybe in Friendswood.”

Tony looked over and noticed that Jo was still sweating on her tan legs, leaving the black leather of his passenger seat noticeably wet and the car wonderfully Jo-smelling. He felt the same welcome stirring he always seemed to feel around her.

“So come on, Madski. Let’s go to DQ! We still got time before the..man of the house gets home. I want something cold to lick on for a change.” That last was delivered with a wicked wink and a drop of the lower jaw - beautiful ice blue round eyes, a wide mouth and just a hint of power. One thing was for certain with Jo: she was sexy to both sides of the fence.

A different set of conversational way-points indeed. Tony smiled.

“Whew! I’m tired. And starved! Maddow my dear, you had - shall we say - a lot to give this time around.” She moved closer, looking at him and not the road ahead. Tony could feel her breath. “The poise was wonderful - exuberance with a hint of sass. And such a body! I’ll never forget the raw taste in my mouth. I just kept wanting to do it again and again!”

Tony had been in love with Jo long enough to know what was coming.

“Oh yeah, and the sex we had after drinking the wine was good too.”

He felt a quiet chuckle rise from deep within.

“So, DQ or bust!” Jo threw her shoulders back and arched her chest forward toward the windshield. She then canted her head left and eyed Tony, smiling. “Sorry, honey. I’ll stop.”

“It’s just that with you I can completely release my inner and sometimes insufferable nerd. Sammie always shushes me when I get this way, plus I don’t think she gets half my stuff anyways. But you forgive and even embrace my goofy attitude. My goofitude.” Jo paused just briefly for another congratulatory chuckle. “Maybe it’s because we never see each other enough. Maybe it’s because what I really wanted in life was a sweet, strong man with a womanly side rather than a domineering woman with a manly side. Eh, that’s not fair. I do love Sammie to death, but in any case, with you it’s different. It’s like it’s always something new each time we see each other.”

Jo sat back in the passenger seat again, and looked out the side window. “That’s it. It’s like the first time every time. And you never forget your first time. That’s why I’ll never forget you.” Punctuated with a smile.

Tony smiled too, receding just a little back into himself.

No, you never forget your first time.