Fear Me

But what the forensic team that went into Cell #17, Weems’ cell, found was unpleasant even for a prison killing. More than unpleasant, but vicious and psychotic and unexplainable. Houle, the hack who first found Weems, said he’d been ripped apart, mutilated, but that didn’t begin to cover it. He had been dismembered and eviscerated, his bowels strung around the cell like streamers of crepe at a kiddy party. His spinal column had actually been pulled out of his back, his head severed but not before his genitals were sheared free and shoved so far down his throat the pathologist had to open his esophagus to get them out. And that was only part of it. Besides the blood and macerated organs, some of Weems’ bones had been yanked through the skin and were riddled with teeth marks.

And then there was Porker, Weems’ cellmate.

They had to take him out in a straight-jacket after he was held down and shot full of Thorazine, the entire time babbling and moaning and whimpering crazy shit about “monsters” and “things that looked like people without bones.” He was taken to the state hospital that morning for intensive psychotherapy.

“All I know for sure, man,” Beaks was saying to them, “is that something got in there, something I don’t want to be thinking about. Whatever it was and whatever the fuck it wanted, they had to take Weems’ ass out in bags and buckets, had to mop the floor to get the rest of him.”

Romero listened and didn’t say a thing.

But he was thinking plenty.

11

Romero was sitting alone in the bleachers by the football field when Aquintez showed. “Hey, home, been looking for you.”

“Lot of people seem to be looking for me.”

“That’s what I hear,” Aquintez said. “Word’s out that Black Dog warned you off of Palmquist.”

“Sure, they’re saving him for Tony Gordo. Don’t want me interfering, doing anything impractical like trying to help the kid out.”

He shared his conversation with Black Dog, though Aquintez had pretty much guessed the lay of it. That was prison life: nothing new behind those walls, just the same old games played year in and year out.

Aquintez pulled off his unfiltered cigarette, spitting out a few stray bits of tobacco. “All right, home. I want you to listen to me and hear me on this. You can’t stand up against these people. You can’t throw yourself against the might of animals like Black Dog and the bikers, the ABs and Papa Joe. They’ll fucking skin you, bro.”

“I know that, JoJo.”

“Then why we having this convo, eh?” Aquintez said. “Why am I seeing something in your eyes that looks like suicide? Why am I thinking you’re just crazy enough to try and protect that fish and forfeit your own life at the same time?”

But Romero would not and maybe could not answer that one. Maybe he didn’t know himself. All these lean, hungry years just getting by, just existing in this cage, not caring, not giving a damn, getting real slick and practiced at turning a blind eye…and now this. Now something he could not understand had been activated just south of his soul and he could not get a handle on it. It told him he had to help the fish regardless of the consequences.

It would not listen to reason.

It would not be practical.

It refused apathy at every turn.

“There’s your boy,” Aquintez said, scoping out Palmquist over by the fence, trying to fade away and blend in like a stain on a wall. “There’s your fish.”

“He ain’t mine,” Romero told him. lang="en-us" height="0" width="2em" align="justify"› Aquintez exhaled smoke through his nostrils, then he smiled. “Ah, but you’re feeling bad for him and the ugly fate awaiting him, eh? Something in you-probably that part I love and respect-wants to protect this kid, beat down any of these vermin who come after him. But you gotta be practical, my friend. Papa Joe says you’re going over, you’re going over. You stand in the way…bad, very bad. It don’t have to be Black Dog’s people or the ABs or Papa Joe’s social club, he throws the casheesh out there and every con with a shank’ll be coming after you. You can’t fight that.”

“No.”

“But you’re considering it…”

Romero did not deny that because he couldn’t. Part of him very badly wanted to stand up for Palmquist before those animals got their dirty hands all over him…but another part wanted to distance himself from the fish as much as possible. Because there was no getting around one thing much as he himself tried-Weems had fucked with the kid and now Weems was dead. Something had happened last night. Something had happened when Palmquist was sleeping and Romero could tell himself again and again that he had dreamed it, but he just didn’t believe that.

He kept thinking about what Palmquist had said about this brother of his. Crazy shit. It made no sense, yet Romero could not stop thinking about it.

My brother…Damon…he’s not like us, he’s different.

Ah, it was nonsense. Goddamn fish probably wasn’t right in the head. He’d been victimized at Brickhaven and he wasn’t in touch with reality, threading the needle in fantasy la-la land. That had to be it.