MAGGOTS

Eyes. Mouth. Teeth. Tongue.

His pained face as he looked at me one last time.

My world.

The ten years I shared with this man. Five years as good friends. Five more as lovers.

The little girl who called him Dada sitting in the backseat. Her chopped off cry as a red bump grew in the middle of his forehead, shattering apart as a metal dot rushed through his brain and splattered me with our memories.

There was no time for tears.

Just shouting. Screaming.

A blood curdling cry.

Whether it came from Lucy or from me, or both of us, I don’t know.

I was on the ground next, a boot against my face.

I cursed at the figures around me, donning dark scarlet camo and big black guns.

“Don’t take her! Don’t you fucking touch her!” the sand in my mouth, the metallic taste staining every word.

The shrill whine as they ripped her from her car seat. The deep pang in the pit of my stomach that told me I needed to stop them, I needed to hold her, even if I needed to explode into a million pieces just to do it.

I thought for sure they’d kill me too.

It was worse than that.

They let me live.

“Mr. Reynolds, this court finds you guilty of the following, sexual misconduct towards a child, public indecency, attempt to flee conviction, and homosexual activity. How do you plead?”

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t say a word from the moment they put me in handcuffs.

Anyone spoke to me with any sort of authority, and I’d spit at them.

And I’d get some kind of sock in the face for it, and then they’d put me in whatever room they wanted me in and told me to play nice and not piss myself just to fuck with them further.

I typically disobeyed regardless.

Hey, at least I looked good in orange.

Five years came and went before they decided they’d rather see me in white pajamas than prison attire.

The Center for Socially Disoriented Individuals became my only home for the latter part of the fifteen years I spent in the system.

I preferred prison.

And my final day in that hell-hole began like any other before it had.

A siren sounding at six a.m. Breakfast in the cafeteria. Morning worship. Field work.

Then therapy.

I had never been to a therapist before. Never had a good enough reason to need therapy.

I used to be happy. Used to be productive and healthy.

I had a family, had a husband and child and-

This chair fucking sucked.

It was scratchy, the fibers on the arms felt like a coconut shell. It made this horrible sound when it caught on the fabric of my outfit, a sound that forced its way into my eardrums and grated itself against my brain.

I shivered. The door opened.

“Alright, Mr. Reynolds,” a well dressed man walked into the room, a yellow folder in his right hand, his left adjusting his glasses as he walked into my vision and sat down on the chair across the desk from me, “how are we feeling today?”

“Great. Only contemplated suicide forty-seven times today instead of forty-nine. Though the day is young, things could change.”

“Mr. Reynolds, you’ve been a bit of a comedian with us the entire time you’ve been here, haven’t you?”

“I just still can’t make out why you killed my husband and not me, I mean, he would have given you way less trouble.”

“Well, Mr. Reynolds, unlike your partner you fortunately did not pull a weapon on a police officer the day of your arre-”

I cut off his tongue with a slam on the table and a singe on my breath as I spoke between my teeth, “He did NOT have a weapon, and you fucking know it.”

Dr. Palm quickly sat back and hovered his hand over a red button on the table.

He shook his head slowly, “Don’t make me do it again, Nedry.”

I huffed, my fist going loose as I slumped back in my seat and conceded, a still healing welt on my cheek silently reminding me to give up the fight now.

It took a moment for the tension to physically settle out of the air, and for Dr. Palm to sit forward once more.

“Mr. Reynolds, I know you feel that your partner’s death was unjustified. I know that. I know it and I hear it, and you are valid in those feelings. But you can’t bring him back. There’s not a single thing in the world that you can do to bring him back. And if you ever want to leave this place, then you need to accept that and move forward with your life.”

“Leave here and go where? Home to my daughter? Oh wait, you fucking took her.”

“Your partner’s daughter, Nedry, is with her biological mother and I can assure you she has been safe and secure this entire time.”

“You won’t let me see her, you just keep saying the same, damn, thing, again and again as if it means something to me.”

“You have no legal claim to Lucy, Nedry. The fact that you had any updates at all about her should be a miracle to you, a blessing from God.”

“Fuck God. And fuck you too.”

He hovered again. I gulped.

He sighed, and leaned an elbow on the desk, “Nedry, the person with the second to final say on your future is sitting right in front of you. I am more, more than prepared to be done with you and send the all-clear to the directors, yet you have been choosing to stay here it seems.”

“What then? Tell me what I’m gonna do with no home and no job? I’m a convicted child molester because I had sex with my husband while under the same roof as my daughter. I am permanently fucked from watching my husband take a bullet to the back of the head right in front of me. Do I sound like an ideal employee to you?”

“Nedry, you’re forty-three. You have too much life left to justify leaving it here,” he gulps and twists a tiny strand of black hair on his head, raises his hand then drops it with a pshhh under his breath before he continues in a hushed tone, “we both know it shouldn’t have to be this way.”

And this time he looked at me with something sincere in his eyes, and he spoke without words, Go do something about it.

I sighed, and shook my head, “You’re part of the system, you can’t exactly complain about it.”

“I am a therapist, Nedry. Above all, I want to help you. Help me help you.”

“Help me? Help me by drowning out my nature? Forcing me into mind numbing, back breaking labor all day then dipping my balls in ice water while making me look at naked men? That’s helpful to you?”

He raised his eyebrows and started rubbing his forehead, looking around the room as if staring right back at the invisible eyes and ears that were no doubt surrounding us.

“Ned, you’ve been here longer than anyone else. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t know if the directors are ever gonna let you leave.”

“And we’ve been over this a million times so apparently you’re not getting the fact that I don’t give a shit about leaving.”

He nods, shakes his hand in the air and spins his chair side to side.

“I mean play your cards right, you might even see Lucy again.”

“Bullshit. You’ve either killed her too or turned her against me, either way I know there’s not a chance in hell I’m ever seeing her again. And even if there was a chance, I know I won’t get it by playing nice with you.”

“Right. Well, you’ve been one stubborn ass of a horse, Nedry, but I can’t make you drink if you’re not thirsty.”

He pulls a folder towards himself and opens it up before his eyes dart around the room, his head still on me but his gaze everywhere but.

Just as I was about to leave my chair, Dr. Palm reaches his fingers out to touch my wrist, and quickly nods down towards the desk.

I raised a brow at him, but then I looked at what he was nodding to.

A scribble on the top of a paper that was stuck in the folder, in thin yellow highlighter the words popped out at me, be in your room by 5 P.M. tonight.

My heart jumped, and I gulped.

My eyes returned to him, “Why?”

“Have a good day, Mr. Reynolds. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

He directed me out the door, and I stood there for a moment, an uneasy feeling filling my stomach and chest with prickly dread.

I didn’t know whether to take the writing seriously or not. Was it a warning? An experiment? A joke?

I tried to brush it off, but I couldn’t. Dr. Palm had always been the weird one out of the doctors assigned to me, not so worried about me getting better but more so concerned with getting me out of here.

And I’ll say to you what I said to him, I had no reason to leave. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t sad either.

In the homo bin as I liked to call it, I had my own personal limbo.

So long as I wasn’t out there, I wouldn’t need to acknowledge what I had lost.

In here, I could play pretend that Louie and our little girl were still living together in our old home. I could make believe I had sacrificed my freedom for their safety. I could believe and feel in my heart, even for just a moment every day, that everything was okay outside those heavily monitored doors.

If I ever left this place, I’d face reality.

And I wasn’t ready for that.

I don’t think I ever could be.