Chapter 2 from Sins of Isis (formerly We Never Talk About It)
Mother and son were separated.
In the young man’s room, the man in the green hat forced the boy to sit on his bed and smacked the defiance off his face. Lucas had never been slapped that way, and all of the fight left him like an ice cube melting on hot asphalt. The room was immaculate, and it was clear that Lucas was not the person who cleaned it. There was a television and game console, along with sports trophies going all the way back to grade school.
“You sure you’re an adult?” Mo taunted him.
The boy started murmuring a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. It was a childish prayer from a man who was still a child emotionally, and, though Mo found it annoying, he found it better than arguing with the little sack.
Lucas’s mom, Karen, was led into her own room by the man in black, and similarly forced to sit upon her bed, which was a double, not a king or queen, and neatly made. The man in black scanned the area, looking, for what she did not know. The room lacked either a phone or a TV. There were some family pictures and other mundane tchotchkes on a nightstand, a small desk, a dresser, and some shelves, along with a few mass-market self-help books. When the man looked in the top drawer of the dresser, he found her nighties and intimates were meticulously folded and arranged. He let them be. He’d brought his bag with him, as well as one of the wooden kitchen chairs, which he had placed in front of her backwards. He analyzed the room once more before slinging his leg over the chair and facing her.
She was shaking in fear, almost violently, when he started talking in that robotic voice.
“Now, mama, you’re just gonna have to calm down or I’m gonna have to reach into my little bag over there and shoot you up with something to steady your nerves … Now breathe in your nose and out your mouth before I need to do that.”
The words that issued from behind the mask were in stark contrast with the modulated voice creating them, creating an indescribable dissonance, but Karen complied. In fact, Karen’s entire life had been about compliance. Even the criminal charges she’d reaped had been the result of her complying with what she had been told to do. It wasn’t that she necessarily wanted to do whatever she was told, but it was her defense mechanism to shut down her mind, to go as spineless as a jellyfish. The reality was that she was not much more mature than her son emotionally, and whatever had stunted her in her formative years hadn’t been made any better by her later life experiences.
“So you prob’ly figured by now that we ain’t here to ask you about yer neighbors.”
She nodded, sniffing back tears.
He continued. “Nope. We been sent here for somethin’ else. There’s someone you … offended … who’s got a lot of clout. And he sent us here to exact a little revenge on you while law enforcement has free rein.”
Her mind wandered. She hadn’t exactly been the most decent person in the past, and she had done a lot of nasty things to a lot of people that she had never once stopped to acknowledge, regret, or apologize for, mostly because others had told her to do them. But, even though she knew a lot of men with a lot of money and clout, she cold only think of one of them who would go this far to get back at her—her ex husband, Lucas’s dad. None of the others cared about her enough to bother or, if they did, they didn’t have the means. But even her ex seemed unlikely to her. She couldn’t rationalize even him stooping so low as to terrorize his own son. Her mind went blank.
“Our orders are to fuck up your life so it can’t be fixed … to make you a disease to all your friends and fam … not a martyr … a disease … and we got just the way to do it … sure fire. You got away with other things you did … but not this time.”
“You’re both going to go to jail, cops or not,” Karen finally snapped, but with an air of matter-of-fact confidence. “You can’t just come in here and do whatever you want and think nothing will happen to you. I know people.” She did know people, and she had appealed to the law and powerful friends before to deal with people whom she had decided that she didn’t want to deal with anymore, even if they hadn’t really done anything and even if she had to invent details and circumstances to convince others to believe her and help her. She was always given the benefit of the doubt, treated like a little girl, and it had led her to believe that she could be imperious to anyone who didn’t have something to hold over her. She never had to apologize. Toward the men she knew and submitted to, she was a dog to be commanded. Toward anyone else, she was a cold queen of vindictiveness … a cute, harmless creature that would tear flesh from bone if provoked or even put out a little.
The man in black laughed at her from behind his mask, and she could almost imagine the malignant, sneering face underneath the visor.
“You need a warrant, and you haven’t even showed me a badge.” She was right. They had not identified themselves at all … nor could they.
“You let us in genius. You opened the door, remember? But that don’t matter. You’re not hearin’ me. We ain’t here as law. So you stop imaginin’ you got any leverage here. You don’t. Now Mo and me like money … and if some rich motherfucker wants to pay us on the side to do you some payback … no skin off our backs. We’ve been ordered to destroy you but leave you alive … just you. You catchin’ my drift?”
Her mouth was drawn into a line and she wore a scowl, but she didn’t say anything. Then the odd resolve that had flickered in her moments before reasserted itself. “So what do you want then?”
“Well I’m about to tell ya … Here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m gonna tell you to do some things … and you’re gonna do ‘em … no protest … no cryin’. It’s gonna be just like it’s all normal for you … no matter what I order you to do. They’re things you done before … nothing new. There ain’t no morality here today and the only rules are my rules.”
As he rebuked the idea of there being any morality there, Karen could have sworn that the light in the room dimmed slightly but not as if there had been a brown out or cloud cover. The air itself seemed to have darkened, and she saw something move on the wall in the corner behind the supposed officer. She did not know how long it had been there, and it spanned the area widely enough that she likely would have missed it if not for her need to escape looking at the helmeted goon in front of her. It were as if it had simply fallen into focus, a coil of a giant snake that had been projected there but was, somehow, intrinsic in the wall itself, slithering up into the ceiling and disappearing. She dismissed it as an extremely detailed shadow from the window, one of those weird reflections that slide across a wall from a bumper or windshield and almost look like a silent home movie.
“Now, we was told that you’re a good girl and will do what you need to … but … just in case you’re thinkin’ a refusin’ … let me show you something.” The man reached for his bag that was sitting behind him. Unzipping it, he took out what looked like a cat litter box, some sort of green melon, and a wire with handles on it. “Now this here is a cable saw. You ever seen one?”
Karen shook her head slowly, unsure of what he was about to do.
“But this here is a special cable saw … the wire is a continuous blade, both sides. He then shot up, making her flinch, and he held the melon over the box. Unrolling the saw, he fashioned it into a small noose, and wrapped it around the green skin. Giving the wire a quick yank, holding both handles in the yanking hand, he watched as the top of the melon fell into the box, accompanied by copious amounts of red juice.
If not for the current situation, it would have seemed like a clever way to slice fruit open while working in a field. But, now, the meaning seemed ominous to her.
“That’s some forbidden fruit, right there. See, Mama, imagine that was a throat and I was using two hands to pull. You get where I’m goin’? If you don’t cooperate in every way I ask you … it’s gonna be your boy’s head in that box.”
She knew it was a scare tactic. She had been threatened in similar ways throughout the years, but she also knew that it was there, standing in her home and very real. Still, with her last thoughts of gaining some leverage, some sort of psychological advantage over this man, she pressed her luck and asked, feigning innocence, “Why don’t you just use your gun? Or your knife?”
But the man in black wasn’t thrown off guard for a second. Without a beat, he responded, “What fun would that be? ‘Sides firin’ off a gun would bring attention we don’t feel like dealin’ with. This way, you can watch your son’s face as the wire cuts through his skin and his windpipe. You can watch it on replay then in your mind … forever. Now, if ya still don’t believe me … I can have MO cute one of yer brats fingers off and bring it in here.”
With that last remark, the cold reality of her predicament settled in, and she once again lost her composure. With tears welling in her eyes, she finally said, “Fine. I’ll cooperate. Just don’t hurt him.” For the last twenty years, she had made everything about her baby. She had wanted to make herself appear to be the best mother in the world. She had done everything for him, even into adulthood—cooking, cleaning, washing his clothes. He never had to lift a finger. She didn’t realize that she was turning him into the exact sort of man child her ex was. In fact, she thought of it as some manner of revenge for him having treated her like trash before throwing her away in similar fashion. That she’d deserved it was never a thought that plagued her. What she had done to him, and others, even though he had assuredly deserved it for what he had done, had been rationalized away years ago. And, now, she knew that she would do whatever she had to do to protect her baby. It never crossed her mind that, if she had made different choices, accepted someone she should have accepted, that she would have had protection form this very moment, a defender, another presence who would have given pause to any enemy but who now hated her … and rightly so, though, if he had known her predicament, he would have charged in and taken their fire anyway. But she had considered herself too good for him, and now she sat staring at this masked invader, sent by someone she should never have entertained, who found her unprotected and would have found her no matter where she had run. She never would have believed she was so vulnerable, and her lack of accountability had come full circle. Her secrets were in danger.
“So you still gonna do what yer told?” the man in black’s robotic voice flooded back into her head.
“Yes.” The tears were gone.
“Good. Let’s test that.” He reached into his black bag and took out a small, plastic baggie with little, colored pills in it. Taking out his hunting knife, he placed a blue pill in his gloved hand and set to cutting it in half. “Here … swallow this,” he ordered.
Having already agreed to follow commands, she put the pill in her mouth … and swallowed it … half hoping it might kill her. “What is it?” she asked, trying not to sound combative.
“Just something that’ll make all this here go a lot easier. Don’t worry ‘bout what it is. It ain’t poison. We’ll give it around 15 minutes. It’s pure … should be fast-acting and you ain’t got the body weight to cause any delays.”
About twenty minutes later, she began to feel the effects. Suddenly she could hear the birds singing outside and the light in the room seemed brighter, with a moonlike aura. Suddenly things did not seem as bad as they had a little while ago. Suddenly, the man in black almost seemed friendly, less ominous, almost familiar, even being clad from head to toe like a stormtrooper. The way he moved made her feel as if she’d inhabited a home with him sometimes in the past, but nothing else clicked. He’d been watching, and he could see the relaxation come over her. He’d given her just the right amount. Too much would have made her jittery, but that half seemed to have done the trick. Behind the mask, he looked satisfied, and he remarked at what wondrous substances he could obtain though his church. She’d be even more compliant than she wanted to pretend she would be.