Chapter 2

Nothingness.



Then, coughing. Violent, grasping coughs, choking on hot, wet air. Inhaling, retching, choking and again the dank, stale air.



Slowly, breathing began to feel less alien. The room was pitch-black and smelled of mold and disrepair.

Where am I?

 

Thoughts urged to create action; a foot wiggled, hands were being held high by something. Hands. Gravity assisted the hands in realizing that they were chained to something. A wall. The hands recognized the feel of exposed brick, and the recognition began to lift the haze from the struggling mind; began to help the mind reconnect to the body, to remember how things worked.



Then, a sound. Repetitive. Evenly spaced. Footsteps. That’s what they were. From above? Yes. They passed and the sound faded away.



Struggling to adjust to the darkness, he opened his eyes as if for the first time.

Marissa Docette stared at the last sip worth of cheap Chardonnay in her glass. She didn’t need to ask for the bottom-of-the-barrel anymore, all three of the bartenders at The Drop knew she wasn’t drinking for taste. Without having to ask, her glass was refilled and she caught a glimpse of the caricature of someone she knew had something to do with sports. 



“Fucking amazing who they’ll let make wine these days,” she said to no one in particular. It was around midnight as best she could tell. The Drop wasn’t known for having clocks on every wall, and the blacked-out windows made sure it always felt like drinking time. Not that The Drop’s patrons needed any help with that. She was mindlessly cracking the shells of the complimentary peanuts set out on the bar in front of her, half-watching a sports highlight show when the front door opened, granting a brief reprieve of light from the parking lot, narrowing to a sliver before disappearing as the door swung shut. 



The man who entered was a regular, she knew, but beyond that she didn’t know much else. He never really talked to anybody except some oafish guy that he would sometimes come in with. He sat down across the bar at the first empty stool, almost directly across from Marissa. Adam, the stocky bartender working that night, ambled over to the man and exchanged a handshake and began to talk to the man. Marissa lost interest and looked back up at the sports highlights show. The show had gone to commercial and she watched an infomercial about a wet-dry vac that can clean wine stains out of white carpet. 



She was waiting for Cathy, and had been for a little over an hour. It wasn’t unusual for Cathy to run late, three or four times a month she’d stop off at a high school kid’s house to buy pot from him on her way over to the Drop. Another 15 minutes passed and Marissa downed another glass of wine.



She didn’t know how much time had passed from the time the man walked in and now, the first time someone had come or gone since then, but judging by the increasing length of commercial breaks on TV it had to have been about a half-hour. Cathy, usually dapper and wearing clothes that were a generation too young for her, looked slightly disoriented when she crossed the threshold of the bar. She nervously glanced around before spotting Marissa, hitting herself in the forehead as she did so, apparently realizing the stupidity of not looking where they sat every night. Her heels softly clicked across the slimy, beer-stained floor as she hurried over to Marissa.



Marissa, who had been trying hard to act disinterested the whole time, casually glanced up from a suddenly full wine glass, catching the eye of Adam, who winked and nodded, and turned her gaze to Cathy. 



“Tight jeans, low cut top, bloodshot eyes…I’d say I know where you’ve been,” Marissa chided as Cathy sloughed her massive purse onto the bar.



“Hey Adam!” Cathy chirped. “The usual, hun! You losin’ weight?” Adam smiled from across the bar and went about pouring a vodka and cranberry juice. “Oh shit. Fuck.” She reached into her purse and struggled until she found her eye drops, which she pulled out and promptly dripped into her decreasingly red eyes. “I always forget about that bullshit,” Cathy finally turned to Marissa. “Doll, honey, you won’t believe the night I’ve had.”



Marissa studied Cathy’s wide, watery eyes and tentatively sipped her wine. “Regardless of whether I do or don’t, I don’t guess there’s any way for me to not hear about it?” 



Cathy chuffed in reply. “Well, if you must know, the girls are on display because yes, that Thompson boy gives me better pot if I show a little skin. Not to mention he’s almost 18. I’m thinking of it as something of a down payment.” 



Cathy had been married for 16 years to a wealthy, if somewhat sleazy, lawyer, known around Knoxville for having his balding head grace busses, benches and billboards with slogans like “I can get you your money!” and “If you’ve been hurt, we’ll make pay dirt.” He was a philandering alcoholic, so it was only fitting for his wife to share his love for extramarital affairs. 



“I’m surprised you’re going to wait until he’s legal. You’ve been stalking that one since he was a toddler,” Marissa teased. Cathy cackled as she threw her head back and drank her entire vodka in a gulp.



“You won’t believe the gossip I’ve got.”




Anders was on his fifth whiskey sour when the blonde woman who reeked of marijuana had come in. She was wearing tight hip-hugger blue jeans with fake jewels on the back pockets, a low-cut top that left little to the imagination in terms of size and inorganic origin of her breasts and carried a purse that could double as a child carrier. 



Passable, he thought as she blustered by him. He knew that she and her auburn-haired friend were regulars like he was, and he could almost taste the menthol in their cigarettes as the blonde one dramatically reached for her cigarette box in her purse. He’d had a hell of a night so far, and was engrossed in thought for almost an hour before looking up and noticing that except for he and the two women, there were only about seven other people in the bar. The jukebox seemed particularly derelict on this night and the lack of music lent the stolid air an eery quality, smoke hanging like fog just above eye level. In the relative quiet of the bar he heard the red-head say:



“And you’re going to believe some 17 year old who says he heard a gunshot in one of the safest parts of the city? How does he even know what a gunshot really sounds like? He deals pot to 35 year old women and college drop outs, he’s hardly running from the DEA.”



This caught Anders’ attention. He grabbed his whisky sour and casually walked over to the two women at the opposite end of the bar.



“Hi. I’m sorry I couldn’t help but overhear something about gunshots and the DEA, and I’m a sucker for a good story. I’ve seen you two here before, haven’t I?” 



The blonde blushed and Anders caught a glimpse of the red-head rolling her eyes as she turned her head towards her wine glass. 



He extended his hand, “I’m Anders.”





His memory was still hazy, but he had control of his limbs and was finally able to put together complete thoughts. He was able to discern that his hands were chained, above his head, to the exposed brick wall. There was a constant burning in his abdomen that worsened when he inhaled and exhaled. It had been a long time since he bled but he was sure that there was a tinge of blood in his mouth. He knew he had been hurt, but the pain was too widespread to effectively find the epicenter.

He was able to determine by his sensitivity to the temperature of the room that he had likely been stripped down to his boxers and undershirt. He was barefoot, and the cold of the cement floor stung against his pained feet. He had tried to muster the strength to test his bindings, but the pain in his stomach made it implausible to try again. He had resigned himself to trying to acclimate his eyesight to the darkness of his surroundings to see if there was anything that might help him determine where he was or how he’d gotten here.



After what seemed like an eternity, his eyes had adjusted to the point of being able to discern varying levels of shadow. As best he could tell the room was largely empty. There didn’t appear to be any doors or windows, and if there were any, they had been sealed off perfectly. As he was beginning to ponder his next course of action he heard a sudden gasp from across the room. At first he thought it must be some type of exhaust, but within a few seconds he realized that he was hearing the same sounds he had made when he came to. He listened carefully.



And then, from the blackness, a voice choked, “Hel……Hello?”

Read more...

Chapter 1

Officer C. Olson was, by all accounts, a son of a bitch. His mother, to all who knew her, was literally a bitch. She was one of the surliest and most unkind bitches that ever walked the earth. His childhood was rife with trigger points that inexorably led him down a path that could end in one of two ways: criminal, or cop. But it wasn't just his lineage that endowed him with his moniker, he was as much the epitome of the policeman you never want to get pulled over by as any man could ever be.

He stood six feet, three and a half inches tall. He had a wide build that, once imposing and menacing even as a silhouette, had made it a point to soften annually. Perched deep inside two cavernous eye sockets were steel-grey eyes; eyes that, nearly three decades before, had sent fear into the bloody and beating hearts of every wide receiver and tailback he ever set sight on. The eyes that once glowed with a white-hot fire had cooled, striking now only in the uniformity of the color of his irises. He wore a mustache, partially because that's what cops do, but also because he knew it was the one thing he could still do to piss off his wife. His nose was thick, like a tree branch, extending up into his forehead, ending in a thicket of persistently untamed black hair. It was also slightly crooked, just above the middle, from his one attempt at a life of crime.

He was nineteen when he lost everything. Some fucking faggot from Waycross High School landed a tackle after a down. Sure the referee called a flag on the play for unsportsmanlike conduct. Sure the faggot never went on to become anything important. But neither did Olson. The way the little shit had landed on Olson's leg literally snapped his femur like a twig, a fact that to this day held the Waycross County Hospital's unofficial title of "Most Crazy Broken Bone." They even kept the x-ray on the wall of the waiting room for the ER, the backwards, redneck fucks. After just over a year of physical therapy, Olson was walking around again, mobile, and even able to jog at a decent pace for a few minutes, though nothing sustainable yet. Either way, his hopes of playing football in college, and thus his hopes of going to college at all, were dashed. After graduation, a lot of kids from his high school stuck around town. Rural Tennessee is not known for producing fine academic minds, with a few gracious exceptions. There wasn't a lot to do in Stapleton; a few bars, a grocery store and a movie theatre were the main attractions. If you didn't leave as soon as you could, the town had a way of sucking you in, holding you down until in your last breath you lamented over a wasted life and passed on into the void. Olson had resigned himself to this fate.

Tim Voyt, who insisted well into his fifties that he be called "Timmy" was the first to experiment with the nefarious side of life in Stapleton. That is to say, as nefarious as a town like Stapelton allowed one to be. Timmy and a few other recently graduated boys had hatched a half-witted plan to rob the cash drawer at The Hinge, one of three bars in Stapelton. It didn't occur to Timmy, Olson or any of the other boys that once they had emptied out the cash drawer they'd just turn around and spend the money on booze at The Hinge or some other bar the next night. Planning wasn't their strong suit. What they didn't expect, in all their scheming, was that the bar's owner and a few of the regulars would still be inside, drinking after hours. When Olson kicked in the back door he was surprised to hear hurried footsteps coming through the service door and even more surprised to feel the swift blow of a crowbar cracking across his face. The other boys ran that first forty yards faster than any they had ever put down on the football field, leaving Olson writhing, red hot with pain on the floor of the tiny kitchen of The Hinge.

The bar's owner threw Olson's hulking frame into the cab of his truck and drove Olson home, where he pushed him out the door and left him to bleed in the yard. After what seemed like weeks, Olson noticed movement on the porch. A cat jumping back and forth across the light coming from the screen door? No. A rocking chair. If his sense of smell wasn't fully occupied with the task of smelling his own blood he would've caught the scent of tobacco in the air, and would've detected the growing stench of alcohol and sweat coming towards him at a steady, if stilted, pace. If he hadn't been so preoccupied with the bleeding, the wretched pain and the flap of his ear lobe dangling from a thread of brutalized flesh, he would've felt the first kick land in his stomach. At this point pain was pain, it all melted together and Olson was the fire at the center of his own hot, painful little world.

Olson's dad had given him the beating of a lifetime, a fact that he carried with him for years as a police officer. Olson spent the next day inside the house, dressing his wounds as best as he knew how while his mother shouted at him for hours on end through the locked bathroom door. He wished he had brought a magazine in with him, at the rate she was going he'd be in here for hours with nothing to do but listen to her berate him. The injury, the attempted robbery, the beating of a lifetime, and still the worst year of Olson's life wasn't done with him yet. The next day he went to see Lenora, the only one who had actually been by his side during the painful physical therapy after his injury.

Lenora Merritt was the daughter of the pastor of Stapleton's one and only church, Stapleton Baptist, and was as much a preacher's daughter as Olson was a member of the royal family of England. Still, her reputation for being...gregarious...didn't matter to Olson. To him she was everything. They had started dating while in their senior year of high school and the way she looked at him; it was like he had saved the world. She even started paying attention to her father's sermons, a stark contrast from her noticeably obligatory attendance in the past.

After his injury, Lenora had been Olson's rock. She was the reason he recovered at all. He didn't have much of a spirit to go on, but Lenora prodded and persisted, telling Olson he'd get better. He could still play football. He hadn't told her what the doctors told him at the end of his physical therapy, that he would never play again. He was afraid that she would abandon him, as he had nearly done to himself.

Back in the upstairs bathroom at his house, he was satisfied that he had dressed his wounds as best he could, and none too happy with the damage the crowbar had done to his nose, Olson decided to go see Lenora; hopefully she would make him feel better despite the earlobe that was held to his ear with a band-aid.

Read more...