CHAPTER 1
Percy Wells, known to those who had found themselves on the wrong end of his skill set as Pain, was no stranger to violence. In fact, his earliest memories of life had been born of violence. One that stood out to him was when his father had laid his mother out with a short right hook. Seeing his father lay hands on his mother wasn’t an unusual thing. The few times he could ever remember his father sparing enough time to come around his mother, they were either fighting, getting high, or fucking. Sometimes all three in one visit.
Pain would’ve been lying if he told you that he could remember what had prompted his father to strike his mother that particular time. What made this situation remarkable was the speed of the strike and the amount of blood it drew. It was akin to watching a rattlesnake tag an unsuspecting rodent. The gash opened by the punch was a small one, but it bled like his father had hit an artery in his mother’s head. That day was one of only three or four times Pain could remember ever seeing the man who creamed in his mother and passed on not only his name, but the generational curse he carried. Pain was born into and had lived with violence all his life, but none of it was quite like what he currently found himself in the middle of.
There were over a dozen men clustered into the common area shared by the unit of the prison Pain had occupied for the last eight months of his four-year stretch. He used the word occupied instead of resided because the latter would’ve implied he could even fathom the thought of ever looking at prison as somewhere he’d gotten comfortable enough to make a home of. As far as he was concerned the few correctional facilities he’d passed through during his bid were simply temporary stops on the road he found himself on. Now that he’d traveled it once, he knew where the potholes were and would be able to avoid them if, God forbid, he ever had the misfortune of coming that way again.
Fists flew while homemade blades flashed in the dim yellow lights that hung from the ceiling of the unit. A good portion of the men who were in the common area that day were engaged in a hellish battle that teetered along the lines of becoming a riot, had the numbers been greater. Those who weren’t getting into it did their best to try and avoid being mistaken for an enemy of one of the opposing sides and attacked by accident, or try to keep from being splashed by the blood that seemed to be flying everywhere. It was no easy task for the neutral parties because as far as the active combatants were concerned, anybody that wasn’t on one of their sides was fair game. When the stakes you were playing for were life and death, there were no gray areas.
To Pain’s right, a man yowled. Pain turned in time to see his belly being ripped open with a jagged screwdriver that was wielded by another inmate. The wails of the wounded were deafening in his ears, and twice he almost slipped in the blood that was rapidly coating the floors. If he had to describe the situation in a word it would’ve been chaos. What made it worse was that this was a chaos of his own making. Pain had been the match that ignited this powder keg.
A shadow descended over Pain, cast by a man who stood around six-five with a body mass that easily tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His ugly face was one that was familiar to Pain. He had never bothered to learn the man’s Christian name, but he was known to inmates and guards alike as Brute. The moniker spoke to his character because for all intents and purposes that’s just what he was, a brute. In every facility he’d been a guest of, he survived by preying on both the weak and the strong. He wasn’t particular about whose food he ate, so long as he went to bed full every night. In Brute’s hand was a length of shaved pipe that had been pried from a bathroom sink, flattened on one end and sharpened to a razor’s edge. The homemade weapon dripped with the blood of the inmates Brute had carved through during the battle to be granted a private audience with Pain. The men who he had cut down were little more than collateral damage, but his beef with Pain was personal. The hateful glare Brute leveled at him said as much.
Had it been a movie this would’ve been the part where the hero and villain exchange some well-scripted banter about what had brought them to that point, but this wasn’t an action film. It was real life. There were only five words spoken, all by Brute, but they carried the weight of everything that was going on around them: “You owe me a kiss.” Then it was lit!
Brute moved with a speed that should’ve been impossible for a man his size. Pain barely avoided the strike from the pipe/spear that was thrust at his face. The blow had been meant to blind him, but missed its mark. A coolness settled in Pain’s cheek, just below his left eye. Then the burning kicked in. Pain knew that he was cut, but didn’t have the chance to assess the damage before Brute was back at him. This time he went for Pain’s gut in an attempt to impale him. The spear met with some resistance when it contacted the body armor under Pain’s shirt. The armor was comprised of nothing more than duct tape and the jackets of a few hardcover books Pain had stolen from the prison library. The book covers kept Brute’s spear from emptying Pain’s insides, but didn’t stop the point from piercing the fat of Pain’s stomach.
Brute smirked triumphantly before driving his weight at Pain, forcing him against the nearest wall. The more pressure he applied, the deeper Pain could feel the spear pushing into his gut. There was no question that he was about to become another notch on Brute’s belt. As his wound leaked, his life began to flash before his eyes. He thought of all the things he had done, as well as the things he would never do and the people he would never see again. His eyes latched onto an image of his grandma reaching out to him. He’d never have a chance to thank her for all she’d done for him. No … he couldn’t go out … not like this.
As if by an act of sorcery, a weapon appeared in Pain’s hand. It was a bedspring that had been hammered as straight as it could be and sharpened into a needle-like point. The end was wrapped in toilet tissue and held to the spring by layers of heavy tape, which allowed a more secure grip. Pain studied it for a brief moment as if trying to figure out what it was and where it had come from. Then the homemade weapon spoke a single word that would make everything clear to Pain: Live.
Moving as if animated by some unseen force, Pain raised his hand and drove the bedspring into Brute’s neck. The bigger man paused as if trying to determine if he had just been stung by a bee or a mosquito. Pain didn’t leave him long to wonder. He ripped the coil from Brute’s neck and hit him again. This time it was in the forearm, which got him to slacken his grip on the spear. Pain ignored the fire in his belly and cheek and went into survival mode. He hit Brute over and over with the coil, striking him in the face, chest, arms, whichever parts of his body he could get to. Brute was so flustered he abandoned his spear and rushed at Pain. He managed to grab Pain around the throat and began choking him, sending them both falling to the ground. The whole way down, Pain kept hitting him with the bed spring. There was so much blood that there was no way of telling where Pain’s injuries began and Brute’s ended.
He couldn’t remember how it had happened, but somehow Pain found himself on top of Brute, straddling his chest. Fighting was going on all around him, but Pain shut it out. His focus was locked on Brute. The big man’s once-white T-shirt was now stained deep red. He was bleeding from the wounds gifted him. Brute was broken and probably not long for the world unless he received immediate medical attention. The king of the cellblock had finally been dethroned. It was done.
There was a moment of hesitation on Pain’s part until his eyes met Brute’s. Even on the threshold of death, there was still defiance in his predatory glare. Pain’s brain was suddenly flooded with the memories of the injustices he and so many others had suffered at the hands of the bully. There was only one way to purge his brand of evil from the world. Pain raised the hand holding the bed coil, poised for the killing blow, and struck with everything he had. Had his blow rung true it would’ve punctured Brute’s brain and ended him for all time, but this was not to be.
An unseen hand grabbed Pain by the wrist and pulled him from the giant just before the blade contacted his skull. Pain landed on his back and before he could right himself, the body of a fallen combatant landed on top of him. This was followed by another and then another and so on, to the point where Pain found himself trapped under the weight of the men. It was suddenly very hard to breathe, and for a time Pain experienced what it must’ve felt like to drown. Only he wasn’t drowning in water, but in blood. There was a sliver of light at the end of the dark tunnel of flesh that he was trapped in. An outstretched hand beckoned to him. Without thought, Pain grabbed the hand and held on for dear life. Slowly, he found himself being pulled free, and when he broke the surface of bodies he inhaled the precious life-giving air. Pain was thankful to whichever angel of mercy had pulled him free and was about to tell him as much, when he found himself pulled into a reverse choke hold. He struggled but could not budge the muscular arm that was crushing his windpipe. With some effort he managed to turn his head enough to get a glimpse of whomever was strangling him. Who he saw was no angel of mercy, but a demon.
Brute stood behind him wearing a sinister grin and flashing a mouth full of bloodied teeth. He leaned in and pressed his bloodstained cheek against Pain’s, his breath hot and foul. He ran his course tongue over Pain’s ear before whispering into it: “Now, about that kiss.”
* * *
Pain was awakened by the sounds of his own screams ringing in his ears. He instinctively leapt to his feet, ready to continue the fight for life or death that he had been locked in. Yet when he looked around he didn’t find Brute, as he was expecting, but an older man wearing a bus driver’s uniform.
“Take it easy, buddy. I was just trying to tell you that this was the last stop.” The bus driver finally found his voice. He was no longer touching Pain’s arm, and had moved himself to a safer distance.
The words came out like gibberish to Pain, as the sleep fog was only slowly rolling back from his brain, but his survival instincts were moving much faster. Near-feral eyes flashed to a point just beyond the bus driver. A woman had paused in her exiting of the bus to see what would become of the crazed man in the back seat. She wasn’t alone. There were at least a dozen pairs of eyes on him with looks that ranged from confusion to fear. Two young girls seated near the front of the bus were even recording him with their camera phones while trading snickers. Pain felt like an animal on display.
“Did you hear what I said?” the bus driver asked calmly.
Pain didn’t answer right away. He was still half expecting the mirage of being on a bus to fade and to discover that he was still behind the wall. His gaze went beyond the bus driver and focused on the road-stained windshield of the bus. Just outside, above the thickening traffic, the sun was just rising over a skyline that Pain knew all too well. “No more locked doors,” was all Pain offered in way of a response.
Pain brushed past the startled driver and through the gawking people toward the exit. He almost twisted his ankle and fell in his haste to get off the bus. The smells and sounds of the hectic city seemed to assault him all at once, making him feel like he was suffering from sensory overload. He had been caged so long that feeling the cool predawn air on his face felt like an extension of the nightmare he had been having on the bus. “No more locked doors,” he repeated like a mantra. When Pain looked up and saw the night sky had begun to fade, and the sun was just about to announce its presence, he felt his eyes moisten in joy. It wasn’t a nightmare, but a dream. After years of incarceration, Pain was really home.
CHAPTER 2
Passion arose at roughly the same time as she had every morning for the last few years, right before dawn. She never needed to set an alarm to wake at that hour; it was just something that her body had been programed to do. Even before she had adopted the predawn rising ritual, Passion never slept longer than she needed to. That was something her mother had instilled in her. “Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. Life can be snatched from us at any moment without rhyme or reason, and every day that we wake up is a gift from God. Never waste a moment of it.” Her mother could be really heavy into God and the church. Sometimes too heavy for Passion’s tastes. Back then she couldn’t really understand what her mother was trying to teach her, but as she got older and suffered a bit more, she received the message. They were all living on borrowed time.
She gave her joints a good stretch before swinging her long legs over the edge of her twin-size bed. She expected to feel the rough threads of her area rug under her bare soles, but instead her feet sank into something lumpy and warm. Cuddled up on the floor next to her bed were her cousin Claire and a light-skinned boy that Passion recognized from the neighborhood. Ramel was his name, if she recalled correctly. She didn’t know him well and the only reason he was even remotely on her radar was because she had peeped him sniffing around Claire for the past few weeks. Passion had tried to warn Claire about the slick-talking youngster and his intentions, but the fact that the two of them were likely naked beneath the cheap sheet said that Claire hadn’t listened.
Passion gave Claire a nudge with her foot, but it failed to stir the girl. So, she tapped her shoulder blade with the heel of her foot. It wasn’t necessarily a kick, but it had the same desired effect. Claire sat bolt upright and looked around nervously like she was under attack. When her eyes landed on Passion they narrowed to slits.
“Bitch, I know you didn’t just kick me like I’m some dog,” Claire snapped. Her skull was still heavy with sleep and she couldn’t understand why Passion was coming at her.
“You rather I kick your simple ass to bring you back to reality, or watch you get your shit cracked when Uncle comes in here and catches you being a ho?” Passion looked at Ramel, who hadn’t so much as paused his snoring.
Claire looked at Ramel as if she was just noticing him. About then is when the fog released its grip on her brain and flashes of the night before began coming to her. She had let the liquor carry her out of pocket. “Shit!”
Passion watched from her bed as Claire tossed the sheets, frantically looking for something swallowed in them. In doing so, she exposed Ramel’s sleeping and naked form. Passion blinked twice, zeroing in on his midsection. She felt herself staring now, and hadn’t meant to, but Ramel had one of the biggest penises that she had ever seen. Even with him unconscious and his dick half flaccid, she could tell that the young man was capable of inflicting some serious damage with it. She smacked her lips unconsciously while her brain drifted to a nasty place in the corner of her mind. “I might have been in a coma, too, if I’d spent half the night trying to take all that.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but had.
“What kind of beating my pussy can stand up to ain’t none of your concern,” Claire said defensively. She hadn’t missed Passion staring at Ramel’s penis as if she was trying to decide if it would taste better with hot sauce or ketchup.
“It becomes my concern when one of you little hot-in-the-ass broads does something that can affect what goes on with the rest of us,” Passion informed her.
“Whatever, Passion.” Claire sucked her teeth and went back to searching through the sheets for whatever she was looking for. A few beats later she dug her cell phone from the sheets. She tapped the screen, but it remained dark. It was dead. “That’s why my alarm didn’t go off,” she said more to herself than anyone else.
“Your alarm might not have gone off, but you know he’s going to go more than off if he comes in here and catches you being freakish with some random boy,” Passion warned. The color draining from Claire’s face said that she didn’t have to expound on who she meant by he.
“Wake up!” Claire began shaking Ramel. When he was slow to respond, Claire grabbed the plastic cup of water that Passion always kept at her bedside and threw it in his face. That got his attention.
“Mama … I’m drowning!” Ramel called for his mother, while his arms flailed like he was trying to swim up from the deep end of a pool.
“Put your clothes on.” Claire ignored his confusion, shoving his jeans and sweatshirt into his lap.
“Let me get five more minutes.” Ramel sucked his teeth and attempted to lay back down. Passion stopped him.
“Shorty, that extra five minutes ain’t worth the rest of your life. Because ain’t no question in my mind that if my uncle comes in here and catches you, you’re surely going to die,” Passion told him.
Copyright © 2024 by K’wan Foye
