Roman Wolfe 2: Classroom Terror

By Bill Sheehan

Roman Wolfe is a Vietnam combat veteran who specialized in the stealthy stalking and killing of the enemy.
After his military discharge he attends college to become an elementary school teacher. But he is still haunted by his experiences in Vietnam, which cause guilt and bouts of severe depression, all related to the senseless killing that he saw and performed.
Two years after his Adirondack kidnapping ordeal (Roman Wolfes Adirondack Ordeal, book 1), he is finally able to relax and be happy with his family, his career and with himself. But peace doesnt last long for Roman; darkness follows him like a persistent, evil shadow.
Romans long awaited, sublime peace is shattered when two escaped prisoners are making a get-away, but are prematurely forced to stop at the school where Roman teaches. Roman and his students are taken hostage by the prisoners. Its then that the mysterious white wolf enters his life, again, after being dormant since the Adirondack kidnapping.
Roman and his spirit wolf conspire to protect the students and thwart the escape plan of the criminals, but Roman must reluctantly return to his world of violence to protect his cherished students.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450261685

Bill Sheehan

A filmmaker since 1978 when he joined the crew of Michael Landon in Hollywood, Bill Sheehan has worked as a camera assistant, camera operator, and cinematographer on TV series, movies of the week, music videos, and feature films. He has also worked as a theatrical lighting designer, a pyrotechnic designer, and a production manager; and in local television, he has served as a commercial production manager, avid editor, and a promotions director. At the university level, he has served as a production manager, a filmmaker, and an audio/visual director for the Ohio State University, UCLA, Columbia University, and Harvard University. He wrote his first teleplay in 1981 for Father Murphy, a TV series, and published his first book in 2005, The Tale of Sonny Barlow. Currently he is writing young adult historical fiction and screenplays. Bill lives in New York City.

Book preview

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Dedication

To Sandy, my wonderful wife and to Mara, my precious daughter.

I am incredibly lucky to have their love.

To Mark French, my nephew and all-around great guy.

To Tony French, my nephew and good friend.

To Mike French, my nephew and the funny man in the family.

To Lori Bullock, my niece and, also, my lovely Princess.

To Todd Bonnewell, my hard-working son-in-law.

To Gus Kovalik, a great friend and fellow shootist.

Prologue

Dear Diary,

What do you say to someone who asks you how many people you’ve killed?

What if that person with the curious mind is your ten year old daughter?

What if your daughter has seen you kill viciously, but in self-defense?

Do you ignore her or lie to her when you’ve always tried to be honest with her?

Is answering with a lie better than the truth? I thought it was, but, luckily, I didn’t have to lie. I kept my response short, bland, generalized. I simply told Grace that I had killed, in self-defense, when I was in the Vietnam War and let it go at that,─ no details, no heroic stories, no showing of medals and no bragging. I wasn’t proud of what I did in Vietnam, though other, higher ranking, military people were.

Was all the killing worth it? Not to me. Not to the dead, nor to the amputees, nor to the physically and mentally wounded, not to the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) victims, nor was it worth the civil strife in America.

I told Grace that, in my opinion, Vietnam wasn’t worth saving from the communists; not at the cost of over fifty-eight thousand American lives.

The world is littered liberally with unjust opinions─ perhaps mine is one of them─ and lies, even in the bible-thumpers. Truth and justice are often lost in the shuffle and complexity of everyday life, while lies, much too often, become tools of everyday life. It’s nice to think the best of people, but being realistically honest is more important to me. So accepting lies, fantasies and/or myths, that encourage self-deception, and demand a rigid, unquestioning mind-set, without proof, is a life I can’t live. There definitely are atheists in foxholes; they fight just as hard and die just as easily as anyone else. The good may die young, but the honest die bravely without religious lies burning their tongues.

I cannot believe that an ancient storybook (like the Bible), in which religious mythology is interpreted differently all over the world, should be the standard for guiding one’s modern life. Logically, it’s like asking millions of people to still believe that the universe operates as it is said to have operated in a book that was written two thousand years ago, and to believe this voluntarily, unquestioningly, without regard to two thousand years of technical and scientific progress. It requires a mentality that’s capable of vast, self-imposed ignorance, a mind-set with the ability to deny the immense strides in progress and knowledge that science has made during two millennium and to revere the myriad religious fallacies and myths that have been exposed during those two thousand years of knowledge and progress.

So religion, all religions with a supernatural God, to me, are exactly as Richard Dawkins has stated: Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Billions of people believe in a personal God (Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.). But I think that the existence of a God described by Christians, Jews and Muslims is a world-wide lie; perhaps not a deliberate lie, not even a white lie, but simply a grandiose lie that people both like and need to believe. It’s an example of a lie that people desperately want to believe, despite its irrationalism, despite its lack of proof, despite its nonsense.

Ironically and technically, we are all atheists whether we want to accept it or not, because most modern people do not believe in the ancient Gods of Rome or Greece or the Gods of any other early civilizations. We are all atheists when it comes to those Gods. But, to their credit, atheists simply believe in one less God and that God is the God of the Christians, Jews and Muslims. So what gives these religions, that bathe themselves in myth and false pride, the right to decide how modern, knowledgeable people live their lives? Is it coercion? Fear? Intimidation? Heritage?

Popular religions are an immense tangle of falsehoods, exaggerations, impossibilities, contradictions, inconceivable fantasies, absurdities, irrational thoughts, out-right lies, revisions, errors of consistency, ineffable thoughts and concepts and, in many cases, just plain nonsense. Religion loves the Aristotelian tradition of articulating opinions, fantasies and myths without requiring any objective support. That’s the only way they can survive.

I wonder, how many religions there are in the world? Over one-hundred, maybe? And they all differ in numerous and significant ways, yet each considers itself to be the true advocate of God. That fact itself has the thunderous ring of human ignorance, confusion, error, desperation and centuries of deceitful manipulation, with the end result being millions of lives using guidelines of mythical, ritualized dogma entrenched solidly in most of the world’s societies and cultures.

So, I ask myself, what is truth? Perhaps truths and lies are simply evolutionary. Perhaps knowing when to lie and when to be truthful is a characteristic of the human genome, something in the DNA sequence that assists humans to survive; survival of the fittest. Lying convincingly could save someone’s life or the lives of others, whereas telling the truth may get someone killed and vice-versa. Perhaps when it came to evolutionary survival, belief in falsehoods was advantageous. Perhaps so advantageous that religious falsehoods were needed, liked, kept and obeyed without question. Then belief was easy; whatever mom and dad believe is what all their children believe, ad infinitum.

But truth, lies and religious myths don’t bother me as much as the fact that I’m uneasy with the knowledge that I can so easily and skillfully kill and that I’ve done it too many times. For me, it’s a disturbing feeling, unrelated to religion, that makes me question my own humanity, even when justified by war or self-defense. But that’s probably as it should be or killing would be much more prevalent.

When I’ve killed, I’ve taken away all of a person’s sunny days, all his hopes and dreams. I take away all he has and all that he could have had. I take the most precious thing life has to offer, life itself, and I annihilate it for all eternity. How could I not think about that? How could I not feel guilty about that?

I only know a few things for certain─ though I cannot prove them beyond all doubt. One of those things is that God, all Gods, are myths. Perhaps useful myths, but still myths, and another thing I know is that the truth will, many times, not set you free, but rather, it will imprison you physically and/or emotionally. Evil watches us, sometimes invades us and even commands us, especially those of us with major character weaknesses and whose portals are invitingly open to Evil’s invasion. We can each look into ourselves and find that darkness, though few people have that kind of courage. Evil has always been there; it’s a primordial, innate, human characteristic.

I also know that evil is immortal, but not omnipotent. It can’t be wounded or killed. It occupies the shell or the husk of a person. It claws, rips, dissolves and destroys the brain’s sanity and the brain’s ability to use logic and reason as guidelines for a happy life.

It has been well documented, by physiologists and psychiatrists, that most happy people have important, similar character traits, but that most unhappy people are unhappy in their own unique ways of forming feelings of discontent. But killing a person whose husk evil occupies does not kill the evil. Evil simply finds another shell to occupy and to eventually destroy. And evil has thousands of brothers, sisters, cousins and friends that perform the same function in their struggle against the forces of good.

I think that Evil is a traveler, like a breeze blowing an ill-fog. It surrounds you, entering your pores and orifices. You can’t help but breathe it into your lungs where it enters the bloodstream and travels to all regions of the inner husk that it will temporarily inhabit and eventually annihilate. Evil can overpower a person, but it can also be defeated. It can be refused access to the brain, but only by the strong, the determined, the persistent, the indomitable, those persons who are willing to repel it in their own way.

So, dear diary, here lies my last dark thought for this entry. I think, since adulthood, I’ve had a death wish. I’ve always thought that I’d die young. I think that may be why I didn’t fight the military’s mistake in drafting me when drafting guys with families wasn’t usually done during wartime. I have always sensed an uncomfortable darkness within me; the fingers of death reaching out for me; a black, cold and quiet tomb waiting for me to take permanent residence; a place where guilt, shame, tragedy and savagery don’t exist; a place where the absence of light is normal and not evil; a place without pain, without disturbing thoughts, without stress or responsibility, and without heroes or cowards; a place where the weary, like me, can finally rest, peacefully.

These are some of my secrets, dear diary. Keep my secrets safe.

Diary entry by Roman Wolfe

1

j.jpg

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

**Samuel Butler **

THE NIGHTTIME AIR LIT up with bright, enemy tracer-fire; taut ropes of green lights cutting through the air like laser beams zipping past our bodies, lighting the moist, hot jungle as we dove to the ground and returned fire.

Then our own staccato-like, red tracer-fire filled the air, but not before we heard the anguished, desperate sound of our dying men, wounded and screaming in agony through clenched teeth, feeling their lives dripping or pouring away as their blood pooled, then soaked onto the jungle floor.

In the morning, if they survived, the sight and smell of the blood would be as appealing as being a horse racing sulky driver behind a horse with full-blown diarrhea.

Each man in the platoon desperately sought refuge behind anything they could find. Some men, in a state of panic and terror tried to bury themselves by digging into the dirt like burrowing animals.

One soldier was digging a small hole and placing his head in it, as if he thought that doing an ostrich routine would save the rest of his body from being seen and shot at. In any other context, that action would have been hilarious. But it was a time of fear, terror, panic, a life-and-death situation. Absurd, nonsense things like that happen when you’re terrorized and feel death’s squeezing grip around your heart and its hellish breath in your nose.

Roman’s body reacted to the terror; the sweat flowed freely, tunnel vision occurred, a numbness cloaked him, while, at the same time, adrenaline saturated his blood. His muscles soaked it up as his body prepared for the inevitable fight or flight reaction. But he knew that panic was the worst thing to do. Panic means the loss of control, loss of power, both mentally and physically. It means almost certain death because it often causes a person to freeze, to stand dazed and helpless as if paralyzed inside a cloud of chaos.

Roman’s M-16 rifle was bucking at his shoulder. He fired bursts of three bullets at a time so he could shoot a running man, by aiming ahead of him, whereas single shots usually hit behind a running man.

The enemy could hardly be seen, and even if Roman could see them clearly, they appeared as nebulous, dark shadows flitting back and forth in the background like fleeting, black wraiths.

Roman’s Colt 1911, .45 pistol was in a shoulder holster, under his left arm. Outside his uniform, his Marine combat knife was strapped, upside down, and attached to the left shoulder of his uniform─ where the breast pocket would normally be─ for easy, quick access. His throwing knife lay in its sheath, under his uniform, inside his back collar, aligned with his upper spine and extending down the back of his neck. These three items were mostly useless in a firefight; the Colt was used for close targets, the combat knife was used for up-close and personal, hand-to-hand combat or when he was night stalking and silently killing with it, and the throwing knife was the most useless of all in the jungle, because there were too many dense trees, bushes and vines to deflect the blade from its target. However, it made a useful fork and knife combination if the real utensils got lost.

Sweat was pouring off his forehead, into his eyes, stinging and making him blink, blurring his vision, frustrating him. His moist hands slipped easily on the plastic-like, fiberglass rifle stock. He tightened his grip, then swore silently as he gritted his teeth.

It was difficult to see. The jungle foliage made the jungle floor look as thick and black as India ink so that the standing men could not see their shoes.

Roman knelt, minimizing the size of his body. He reloaded the M-16 and suddenly Christmas came to his mind. It was an absurd thought, especially now. He wondered why his mind would do that, then noticed the red and green tracer-fire, the colors of Christmas, so maybe─ Damn! pay attention, he screamed at himself as a green laser beam passed just to the right of him. He could feel its lethal breeze on his cheek. He moved away quickly; someone must have me in their sights, he thought. He needed to change locations. Roman was well aware that at night, with tracer fire, he could be located easily by simply following the laser-like beams right back to the rifle that shot it.

Shit! Dammit! Where’s Billy? he thought, then said, How the fuck could I forget about Billy? Roman surged left to get out of the rifle fire that was zipping past his right shoulder like crazed bees. He accidentally smashed into Billy, who fell farther to the left.

Roman had told Billy to stay close to him, that he’d try to keep him safe. Billy was the new guy.

Billy? Roman whispered.

Billy didn’t respond, nor was he firing his rifle.

Must have frozen in panic and terror, Roman guessed.

Green tracers were shooting off to his left. Roman knew that the VC saw him lunge left and were trying to catch him running, so they shot ahead of where they thought he would be, hoping he’d run into their bullets. But Roman had fallen to the ground with Billy.

Roman’s mouth felt as if he’d licked sand. He didn’t have enough moisture to even swallow his own fear. He was concerned for Billy, which took precedence over his dry mouth.

Roman forced himself to focus. Damnation! That was damn lucky for Billy and me, he thought. The tracer-fire stopped just ahead of Roman; the bullets hitting a tree with rapid thump, thump, thumping sounds. He saw the liquid-like shadows of flying bark with each thump.

Roman hugged the ground. He saw Billy doing the same. Good. Stay down, Roman said to Billy.

Roman still hadn’t heard Billy shooting, but was less worried now because they were both prone, a position that made them a very difficult target, due to the thick brush, broad-leaf plants, vines, and tree trunks.

Roman knew that Billy was terrorized, probably in a static state of panic. It happens a lot, he thought. Guys freeze, becoming perfect, immobile targets, like statues, then die riddled with enough bullets to make them a human sieve.

Billy was still a teenager; only eighteen, with peach fuzz for a beard. Roman was trying to get him safely through the initial fear, panic, and terror of his first firefight─ quite a bit different than shooting paper targets at the Marine boot camp on Parris Island.

Billy was a short, thin, shy, farm boy who always showed nervousness. One way he showed it was by talking almost non-stop, as if his life depended on it. He talked rapidly and continuously as if there was no such thing as a period at the end of sentences. You could hardly detect even the pause of a comma in most of his sentences. If he had been Wyatt Earp, in a gun fight, he’d be shooting from the lip. Luckily, he had to pause to breathe. But he was a good kid, just too young and innocent to be here, thousands of miles from home and trying to stay alive with too few combat skills. Probably got drafted. He should have joined the Air Force, Roman thought.

Roman again whispered to Billy. No answer. Roman kept his head down as he crawled ahead using his elbows until he bumped his head into Billy’s boots. Roman’s initial thought was that Billy was performing the ostrich routine until he realized that the toes of Billy’s boots were pointing skyward. A fleeting, but ominous feeling stabbed his heart like a thick needle, then flew away on bat wings. Roman shook, then pushed Billy’s boots. Roman whispered impatiently for Billy to get moving, but Billy only slightly moved one leg.

With tracer-fire all around him, Roman got pissed-off and dragged himself up to Billy’s shoulder. Through grinding teeth he whispered, Goddamnit Billy! We’ve got to get out of here. Too dangerous. Stay down, but get your ass moving! Crawl behind that large tree. Roman pointed straight ahead, about ten feet. When Billy didn’t respond, Roman’s anger choked him as it became a lump that lodged in his throat. Roman slapped Billy, hoping to snap him out of his immobilizing panic and terror.

Billy’s head turned slightly to look at Roman, who was so close to him that their noses almost touched. Roman saw the dreamy gaze in Billy’s eyes. Shit, Roman thought, Billy must have dove forward and hit his head on a rock or tree root. He must have been knocked out for awhile and that’s why he didn’t answer or respond.

Billy smiled weakly as a thick stream of chewing tobacco juice slowly traveled between his lips and ran down his cheek.

But, then a rocketing icicle cold fear shot up Roman’s spine. Icy tentacles gripped Roman’s heart, making it skip a beat. Oh, fuck no, Roman thought. No. Please, no, Roman thought. Oh, shit. Billy doesn’t chew tobacco. Then, as suddenly as a broken shoelace, Roman’s head fell into the tightening claws of a monster migraine. What the fuck’s happening? he uttered to himself, amidst the cacophony of rifle fire and screams.

Roman knelt close to Billy and placed his hand on Billy’s chest to check his breathing. His chest was wet, felt slick like oil. When Roman removed his hand and peered at it, it too looked as if it had chewing tobacco juice on it. His head pounded as if it were an anvil being hit with sledge hammers. He stared at his wet hand. Not oil. Not tobacco juice. Blood. Blood that looked black as tar in the jungle darkness. His hand was slick with Billy’s warm blood. Roman froze, as everything became quiet. He didn’t hear the screaming, the rifle fire, nor did he see anything, but Billy. Damn me to Hell! he screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself say it.

Billy blinked sluggishly as Roman stared down at him with horror and sympathy. Billy was dying─ three bullets in his chest and abdomen. Roman realized what had happened; it was one of the most devastating events in his life. He’d promised to protect this kid, this teenager, and he had failed miserably. A monsoon of guilt poured over him.

Billy coughed. A mist of unseen blood sprayed Roman’s face as more thick blood poured down Billy’s cheek, onto his neck. Blood pooled in the hollow of his neck. Then the tragic epiphany hit him like a brick to his head. The thump, thump, thumping sounds that he’d heard were not bullets hitting a tree. They had hit Billy. And the flying bits of bark that he thought he saw? They were really blood spray thickly out of the wounds.

Then Billy’s words, like daggers, stabbed Roman in the heart. Those few words hurt more than bullets would have, especially because, when Roman had time to think about it, Billy’s words were true. Billy struggled to talk, then said, You push . . . pushed me . . . int . . . into . . . th . . . the . . . bull . . . ets.

Roman’s jaw dropped in horror as Billy’s eyes were losing their spark of life. Billy’s final words strangled Roman. Billy gurgled, Yuh . . . kilt . . . me, Billy weakly grabbed Roman’s arm.

Tears flash-flooded Roman’s eyes. They streamed down his dirt-crusted cheeks. He gasped, wheezed, choked on his own saliva. He struggled not to vomit, then hyperventilated while completely unaware of his surroundings. He grabbed Billy, leaned over and put his lips to Billy’s ear. I’m so sorry. It was an accident. I’m sorry Billy. So sorry. But his words fell on dead ears. He sat up and held Billy’s head in his lap, not caring about the danger. Shoot me, you fuckin’ bastards! Put me out of my misery! he screamed into the blackness of his mind and into the blackness of the jungle.

Roman became bloated with rage. He stood up and screamed maniacally at the VC, their bullets whizzing all around him. He screamed again, Fuck you, you gook bastards!

Instantly he pushed himself off the ground and charged the nearest enemy movement. But before he could get to full speed, Hawk Eye tackled him, forced him down. Roman fought viciously, animal-like, as rage filled him with energy and strength. Roman and Hawk Eye were vaguely aware of puffs of dirt spraying upward all around them as they struggled, as miniature, lead jets looked for a soft runway of flesh to land on.

Hawk Eye quickly realized that he couldn’t hold onto Roman any longer. Hawk Eye screamed at Roman to stop and when Roman fought him even harder, Hawk Eye crashed the butt of his .45 against Roman’s skull.

Numbness. Relief. Blackness and tranquility relaxed Roman’s body within the safety of unconsciousness. Then, under covering fire, Hawk Eye dragged Roman behind a vine infested tree trunk.

Upon waking, Roman’s first thought was, I accidentally killed Billy. Then, the platoon ran into an enemy kill zone and here I am alive, not a single scratch, except the lump on my head. Roman’s stomach churned with self-disgust.

Nighttime in the jungle was like a bug infested cemetery. Only an occasional animal noise pierced the inky darkness.

The next morning the enemy was gone, just vanished silently. Roman took care of Billy’s body, not allowing anyone, not even Hawk Eye, to assist him with the body bag. Roman carried Billy a quarter of a mile, to the nearest clearing, where he placed Billy into the helicopter, with all the other dead bodies and the seriously wounded.

Thereafter, Roman wouldn’t allow anyone to get close to him, except Hawk Eye.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

The war has been over for a years, but Roman often awakens fearful, sweaty, cold, confused and always angry. He had awakened this morning just that way. It was that terrible dream again. His face and hands were slick with sweat. Each time he had that dream, the sweat felt like, even smelled like, Billy’s blood. The nightmare was always so clear, as if it were actually happening all over again. He’d tried so hard to cast the nightmare out of his mind, but it was an unfailing boomerang.

He got out of bed gently, feeling the bottom sheet sticking to his back, wet with sweat. He straightened his twisted boxer shorts, then moved quietly so he wouldn’t awaken Sam. In the bathroom, he sat on the toilet─ more to think than to pee─ elbows on knees, fingers covering his eyes, crying silently. His body shuddered, quaked with guilt. The guilt hung precariously over his head, heavy, pointed and sharp; the Sword of Damocles. Roman whispered curses at the nightmare, cursed himself and pleaded for Billy to forgive him, which was his frequent act of contrition after each of those nightmares.

But this was not Roman’s only nightmare. There were other nightmares that would not let him forget the terrors of war; all the horrible things men are willing to do to each other for a chunk of land or power or anger or ideology or just plain, ruthless stupidity.

Roman lived with his nightmares, dealt with them the best he could simply because he now knew that he wouldn’t be able to forget them. They were like the sucking, poisonous tentacles of an octopus, a different nightmare occasionally grasping him, squeezing him until the guilt poured out of him like water from a hose, draining his energy and filling him with remorse, then enveloping him in emotional depression.

Roman continued to think about Billy and all that Billy might have been, all that he might have done. The good things he could have done; the family he could have raised; the friendships he would have made. Roman knew that Billy was neither brave nor a coward. He was just Billy, a teenage boy in the wrong place, without adequate training.

Thinking of bravery and cowardice, Roman realized that bravery and cowardice both have the same root, which is fear. The only difference between heroes and cowards is simply whether or not a person can confront and conquer the fear. The brave conquer it and take preventative, life-saving action, while cowards panic and/or freeze and cannot act or act in a negative way. Roman knew that most of the guys thought Billy was a coward. Roman didn’t. Billy needed help, training, guidance, but Roman couldn’t give those to him fast enough. The irony of the hero and the coward, Roman thought, is that most people are both. We have in us the ability to be both─ just like we are not all good or all bad. It’s only the situation and circumstances of acting as a hero or a coward that differ in all of us. Like Mark Twain said, Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave. You have to conquer your own cowardice to act bravely.

Roman mused, Why do I worry about personal guilt, shame, pain and sorrow? Why do I occasionally think about suicide? The world is such a cruel place. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. (Mark Twain)

Thoughts of death slipped into Roman’s mind like a snake into a mouse hole. Seems like most people think of death as something that must be delayed, fought, struggled against. You’re considered a coward if you surrender to it, and definitely a coward if you cause your own death. On the contrary, Roman thought, a person has the absolute right to commit suicide. Roman remembered reading a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer that said something like this: People tell us that suicide is the worst form of cowardice, that suicide is always wrong, despite the fact that it is extremely obvious that there’s nothing in this world to which every person has an unquestionable ownership to his own life, to his own person, to his own body and, therefore, has the universal right to end it if he chooses to.

Roman continued to sit on the toilet, using it as a chair, and thought that Death itself was no big-deal. How he died mattered to him, but not nearly as much as fading away, being forgotten by those he loved so dearly. His mind drifted into darkness. He thought, Facing my inevitable annihilation isn’t nearly as bad as having loved-ones placing me into their mental attic to collect dust and cob webs, to wither and fade away as they think of me less and less each year. Then the once bright, clear, joyful memories fade into a misty cloud of vagueness, as if precious memories were sugar cubes dropped into a glass of water. It’s bad enough to die and leave the ones you love, but much worse, you die a thousand more deaths as the pleasant memory of you dies within them, until all the memories of you are dead, buried in the dust of the unvisited attic, the closed and forgotten memory cemetery. But remembering dead loved-ones can cause suffering and Roman didn’t want that either. The dilemma was: Is suffering from the memories of dead loved-ones better or worse that not suffering by forgetting them? Roman also thought, It’s no consolation that the same thing will eventually happen to those who go on living.

Roman quietly exited the bathroom and tip-toed to the living room where he sat, staring into the darkness, feeling depressed and angry and as empty and dry as a nun’s vagina. He wondered if a majority of war veterans with actual life-and-death combat experience felt like he did: the bad dreams, the depression, the PTSD, the haunting guilt, as if his and their minds were like haunted houses with roving ghosts stirring up the dust of guilt in each room.

Serious depression was the worst condition for Roman. Luckily, PTSD plagued him less frequently now. Roman knew manifold ways of concealing depression. During his high school years he’d find a quiet, isolated corner of the cellar, or take a walk into the woods, or bury his face in a thick pillow and scream with rage and frustration, or he would perform one-hundred push-ups, sit-ups and knee-bends. Once he punched a hole through thick drywall, hitting a stud behind it. The edge of the stud splintered, resulting in abraded knuckles that didn’t hurt, at first, because they were numb, but the one inch, needle-like sliver that penetrated half way through the skin around his index-finger knuckle was a pleasing distraction. The blood pooled, then ran along all his knuckles like a drunken, red worm. It was then that he discovered that exhaustion and pain were a panacea, a distracting, pleasing, satisfying, but temporary relief from depression. The high school bullies he readily fought had no idea how welcomed they had become to him. Some days, Roman had even sought them out . . . he needed to fight.

/…/.-/-./-../-.--/../.-../---/…-/./-.--/---/..-/

2

j.jpg

I found one day in school, a boy of medium size, ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

**Bertrand Russell**

THEY SAT IN THE prison cafeteria staring out of the grimy, spotted windows. Self-satisfied smiles etched into their faces as they viewed the hard and heavy April rain. They’d been waiting almost two months for this harsh, early morning downpour. It had to fall at the right time of the morning, but not on a weekend. It had been a long time coming, but today was finally their lucky day. Today they could escape this lousy prison, with its ubiquitous iron bars, myriad locks, manifold cameras, high electric fences topped with razor wire; its buried ground sensors; its cage-like cells, the depressing, chipped and stained walls and food that looked and smelled like vomit. Their cold, sinister eyes darted at one another, then sparkled with the joy of conspiracy.

Otto Fangzahn continued to smile at Charlie Miller as they sat at their over-crowded, cafeteria table. Otto ran his right hand over his flat-topped, crew-cut, feeling the vertical bristles of hair similar to the bristles on a hair brush. As he did it, his hand resembled a jet landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The other inmates’ eyes gave fleeting glances to the two of them. Many of the prisoners knew about the escape plan, but said nothing for fear of a protracted death. Fangzahn, the undisputed king of the prison weight lifters and vicious street-fighters was nobody to rat on, unless you were suicidal.

Otto Fangzahn. Everyone called him Fang because he insisted on being called that, but also because his right canine tooth was more horizontal than vertical; his upper lip often caught on the tooth, making a comical sight that everyone learned not to laugh at. Many other members of his family tree demonstrated the same tooth deformity, the result of hereditary influences.

Otto’s surname was very appropriate, coming from the Proto-Germanic root tunthskaz, an extended form of the linguistic root for tooth. Otto came from German stock and was infamous for his sadistic viciousness. He would just as soon bite a chunk out of you or gouge an eye out if you crossed him. He liked to demonstrate a deadly, poisonous smile just before he bit off an ear or a nose, then spit it at his victim. He’d smile broadly, showing crimson teeth, lips and chin covered with blood, like fiendishly, scarlet lipstick. The blood also made the scar on his cheek appear prominent, the scar remaining white while the surrounding skin was bloody. When Fang smiled, his cheek stretched and the scar took on a bone-white color with reddish-pink edges. The scar looked as if was caused by a puncture, then a tear, resembling a keloid. It gave him an even more beastly grimace which he was quite proud of. He displayed the scar as a badge of courage and brutality, but, ironically, it disturbed him whenever anyone questioned him about it, even if it was Charlie.

One supposedly accidental killing in the weight room, combined with two prisoners with accidentally broken arms, were enough to insure the silence of anyone who was privy to information about the escape. Fang would personally rip the throat out of anyone who crossed him, and if he couldn’t get to them, he’d order someone else to do the killing for him. Only extreme fools thought about crossing Fang. Not even solitary confinement could keep a person safe from Fang or from his loyal and sadistic, mindless minions.

Charlie turned toward Fang and whispered, Yuh sure the get-away car’ll be there? Yuh got someone a hundred percent reliable, right?

A course. Yuh think I’d forget? Don’t be a moron. It’s ‘nough that my brother be one. An’ speakin’ a my brother; he’s the one bringin’ the car. An’, no, he’s not very reliable. But I made him a hundred percent reliable really fast with a phone call.

Yeah? How’d yuh do it?

I tol’ him that if he didn’t help with what I need, then when I got outta prison, I’d kill ‘im or maybe I’d have it done sooner by a friend on the outside. Then I tol’ ‘im that before I killed ‘im, I’d cut his finger-tips off and make ‘im eat all ten of ‘em. Then I’d castrate him and shove his balls in his mouth and tape his mouth closed. Fang laughed quietly, not wanting to attract any attention. He come aroun’ ta my way a thinkin’ real quick like.

Fang was the perfect example of a human gone terribly wrong; the perfect example of Darwin’s Theory of evolution colliding with Murphy’s Law. It was an evolution gone violently astray; seriously and unalterably warped so much that he personified evil. Fang was constantly a serious irritation to most other human beings, like a wool condom or wool tampon would to the ones wearing them.

You’d do that ta yur own brother?

Fuckin’-A, man! Goddamn right I would. Anyway, he say it’s all set up. He’ll be waiting for us. Don’t yuh worry.

Charlie smiled and said, Great. Good ta know.

Fang smiled, showing brownish-yellow teeth, though he didn’t smoke. He was excited by the sound of the drenching rain and the freedom it meant to him. He took Charlie’s hand and placed it gently on his groin, rubbing it in sensual circles, under the cover of the table.

Charlie got the message. It was his job to satisfy Fang because Fang protected him from physical harm. But it was also a job that Charlie enjoyed. Charlie was very good at his job. He’d done this hundreds of times, in and out of prison. To Charlie, the word succumb was really two words.

What Charlie hadn’t enjoyed, however, was when Fang gave him a painful prison tattoo on his butt cheeks. The left buttock tattoo said FANGS, and the right buttock tattoo said HOLE─ Fang didn’t know anything about possessive, proper nouns, so he didn’t place an apostrophe between the G and the S.

Fang deliberately looked away from Charlie, following a preset sexual routine. He started talking to another inmate who sat across the table. After Charlie sneaked under the table, all the inmates on that side of the table slid closer together so the space that Charlie vacated didn’t give a clue to the guards. Also, when this human barricade was formed, no one could see under the table, except at the extreme ends.

Charlie, now under the table, on his hands and knees, pulled Fang’s zipper open. Fang seldom wore underwear because of his sudden sexual urges. He liked the feel of his penis rubbing against his jeans. He even liked the name given to wearing no underwear; going commando. It gave him an even greater macho feeling, only this wasn’t the power of swollen muscles, it was the power of his swollen penis, his sex weapon.

He thought that underwear got in the way of his sexual spontaneity, though he didn’t use those exact words. Fang continued talking with the prisoner across the table from him. It was just idle chit-chat that would keep up appearances of normality.

Fang could hear and feel Charlie maneuvering under the table. Charlie was excited as his salivary glands gushed saliva into his mouth. At times, like this, Charlie had to spit excess saliva out