Page 20

Trapped: Being caught or confined in a situation, place, or emotional state from which escape is difficult or impossible.

W here can anyone be truly free?

I sat across from my brother. Judas didn’t look good. He was usually a mad hatter, but today, he just seemed…off.

“Judes?”

He was staring at the wall, not really seeing anything, his expression blank as the damn white paint he was fixated on.

“Brother?” I tried again, lightly gripping his arm.

He leaned forward, his fist swinging hard and fast directly into my jaw. Wheeling backward, I tumbled right onto my fucking ass.

“What the fuck, Judes?” Blood welled up in my mouth, and I spat it onto the floor.

Crash!

The door to the room slammed open, and two guards moved inside. But I held up my hand, motioning the guards to stop.

Judas stood over me, a strange look clouding his face. He was breathing wicked fast, his handcuffs glistening with my blood from the strike.

Goliath walked up to us, reaching his hand out to me and pulling me back onto my feet.

Son of a bitch—I was still feeling the effects of my ‘late-night non-consensual swim,’ and his love tap didn’t help clear my mind.

Lith thumped Judas in the back of the head, barking an order to sit the fuck down.

Judas shook his head, his lazy smile replacing that strange cold stare.

“Hey, Roe. When did you get here?” He rubbed his bruise absently. “Ow…”

Goliath gave me a look that said this was happening a lot lately.

“Good to see you, Judes,” I said, wiping the blood from my mouth

“Larry,” he sang, dancing around the table and licking the blood off his metal bracelets. “We have company. All the gangs back together.”

Before he started singing a song about the three musketeers, I gave Lith a look to confirm we needed to talk.

The guards in the back walked forward. I locked eyes with my favorite one. He wasn’t shorter than me and my brothers.

He stared at his shoulder and the man’s hand, looking up at him and giving him a kissy face. “Oh baby, you know I like it rough.”

The guy removed his hand like it was on fire and made Judas chuckle, continuing his dance around the two guards.

“Judas Masters, visiting hours are over. Return to your cell.”

Jude’s grabbed the plastic cup filled with water on his table, smiling wide before he smashed it in his grip. The guards reacted, but not fast enough.

Judas spun around with the cup in his bleeding hand, linking the big man’s neck in a vice grip with his handcuffs. He began dancing around with him and managed to finagle a jagged piece of plastic next to his jugular.

“Now, now, boys. Why stop playtime when it just got fun?”

Everyone froze, a little drop of blood welling at the point of contact from the homemade weapon, as well as my brother’s blood dripping onto the tile from his injury.

“Judas,” I said calmly, raising my hands and cautiously approaching my brother.

The man in his grip was a tough mother fucker, he had a set glare and his hand itching toward his weapon.

No…

“Judas, stop. Let your lover boy go. He doesn’t want to play.” Goliath was motioning at everyone to sit still. The fidgeting of the other patients, the nurses, and the visitors became intense. It was apparent they were all antsy and eying the door.

The guard’s hand got to his weapon, but Judas pushed him against the wall, pinning his hand that held the taser.

Judas growled in the man’s ear., “Well, well, Liebling, Glad to see you have some fire. I like to feel you burn.”

The man grunted, and Judas air-humped him before pulling away, smacking his ass, and dropping the plastic glass-like material before raising his hands with a big smile on his face.

The guards snapped into action, running at Judas and slamming him down to the ground, locking his arms in a rough grip before pulling him up and hauling him off. As he was led out of the visitors’ section, he stared at Goliath and me, accusations written in his eyes.

“When did brotherhood mean abandoning your own for the likes of women, boys? Did I fucking miss that memo?”

His words hung over our heads like a cloud as we watched him being marched away.

The room was silent, and Goliath barked at the civilians and patients. Chatter started up, but the atmosphere was changed.

I stared at the blood on the floor left by my brother.

He felt like we were abandoning him for women?

I wasn’t even with a damn woman.

Thoughts of Fallon’s beautiful strawberry-blonde hair invaded my mind, and I cursed.

Goliath’s woman in question walked out in her nursing outfit, running to Lith. I watched my brother melt like a fucking popsicle as he picked up his little troll girlfriend and kissed her.

It was awkward as fuck watching them macking on each other, but their actions made me think of Fallon again. This time the memory of her sinful little hand as she used the shower head on her cunt popped into my head.

Fuck. I hadn’t seen her since she pulled my ass out of the fucking bay. Looking like a drowned rat wasn’t exactly the lasting impression I liked to leave.

I reminded myself that I would see her tomorrow for class. It was Sunday, and I could wait one more fucking day. Besides, she probably didn’t want to see me.

“Come on, Little Lamb,” Goliath said to Ezello. “You and my brother need to hear this.”

I snapped back to reality when Ezello hugged me, and I was pulled out of the door and into the far back hallway where Lith’s office was.

It made me smile seeing Warden Masters on the plaque on the door. My brother always had that annoying ass habit of wanting to be a hero, and now in his own weird way, he was.

“Roe, now you’ve seen firsthand why I have been distant. This is the fifth time this month Judas has gotten thrown in solitary confinement. I have tried talking to him, but it’s like talking to two people lately, and I don’t know which Judas I am talking to anymore.”

“It’s true, Pharaoh,” Ezello joined in. Her Spanish accent sounded heavier than the last time we spoke.

“Judas hasn’t been himself lately. He isn’t taking his medication.

The nurses, including myself, have found his pills tossed in the toilet, shoved into the wall, and thrown around the study and library. ”

“Why is he refusing to take his meds?”

Goliath sighed, rubbing his stubble. Ezello linked her hand with her giant’s.

“He said that Larry is the only one who cares about him anymore, so he’s done taking shit that makes him hard to find.”

“Ah, so he’s saying fuck off.” I put my lips in a hard line.

Ezello nodded. “He has definitely been acting out lately.”

There was a knock at the door, and Lith let in the person with a gruff command. The guard from the visitor’s section walked in, sporting a bandage on his neck now.

“Pharaoh, this is Randall. He is a new recruit to Hospital Thirteen’s guard unit.” Lith said, and I reached forward to shake his steady hand.

“Sorry about our brother,” I said, and he laughed, showing that he was a good sport.

“I’m used to the Masters brothers’ antics. There’s nothing he can do to me that I haven’t had to deal with in the past.”

I respected him instantly, his gruff voice and something in his eyes showing he had lived through some shit.

Good. A guard for these specific patients needed to have some grit to him.

“Randall used to work in New York,” Lith continued, and I frowned, wondering where this was going. “He was working for our Quinny Pie, actually.”

Randall scoffed. “That man is a dick.”

I raised my eyebrows, shocked to hear anyone bash the white knight’s name, and that made me like him more.

I laughed. “We will get along.”

“What the fuck does your brother keep calling me?” the man said, rubbing his fingers over the bandage.

Goliath and I both looked down, the memory of the nickname not the best in our past. Our mother. Our bio womb. All any of us could remember was that word. She was German and called us all darling. I didn’t know if I wanted to inform this big man of Judas’s pet name, so I shrugged.

Lith cleared his throat, clearly not wanting to traipse down memory lane either.

“Randall isn’t just the new guard here, Roe,” he said carefully, studying my face.

I inhaled and held my breath, not realizing I was waiting to release it with his words.

“Remember how I said I hired a private investigator? Well, Randall is one of the best, but he is completely off the record. He is the one who found out that the murders of your family were all from the same person.”

I coughed, and that breath released into some pitiful ass cough-swallow fit. Great, now I was wheezing to catch my breath.

“I…I…see,” was all I said.

The guard looked empathetic. It made me quite aware that he knew about the very story of how my life lost meaning.

The question formed in my head and hung on my tongue. I wasn’t sure whether or not to ask it because knowing could be harder than not.

Fuck it.

“Do you know who it is?” I said, feeling my nails slice into my palm as I held them tightly balled into fists.

I imagined the blood of their killer in my grip.

I wanted to rip them apart with my bare hands, wanted to throw their dead corpse into a fucking meat grinder so that a million sunflowers could be born with their fucking demise.

I wanted to watch the soul drain from their eyes just as they did to her.

I wanted Xenia.

Her sweet little voice drifted to me like a song in the air, her warmth palpable in my hands from the heat of my blood.

“Daddy. It’s okay,” she said, in her little sunflower dress while sitting primly on the desk by Lith.

I smiled at her, noticing her beautiful black curls glowed in the overhead lights in here. I released my fists and wiped my palms on my jeans.

“Did you find me, Daddy? I am waiting.”

I frowned at her. She still thought we were playing hide and seek?

I shook my head.

“No, I am sorry,” I responded, watching her stand on the desk and twirl her dress in her gleeful excitement.

“Find me, Daddy! Don’t let the bad man come back.”

My heartbeat quickened, the sound thrumming in my ears and making it hard to hear the world around me. I vaguely noticed my brother and his companions staring at me.

I was sweating, and I wiped my forehead, feigning a smile like I wasn’t fucking insane talking to my dead kid.

“Pharaoh?” Goliath said, concern, lacing his deep tone.

I waved him off.

“I got some shit to do, brother. Think I can check back with you later?”

Lith looked at me silently, staring at the spot where Xenia was giggling and twirling on his desk.

“Uh…yeah man. Anytime but—”

I ran my hand through my hair, turned my body toward the door, and started walking to the exit.

“I’ll be waiting!” Xenia said, and she faded into a fit of giggles that carried around me like the warm breeze.

“I gotta’ go. Later, brother,” I said, ignoring his calls for me and pulling out of his hands that tried to grip my shoulders.

The exit felt like a godsend, complete with ‘Hallelujah Bells’ when I finally pushed through, and the silence of the hallway met my ringing ears.

“Fuck…” I tried to catch my breath.

I leaned into the wall, trying to stabilize myself and feeling dizzier by the minute. The long hallways seemed to grow before my eyes like a labyrinth, not offering a single hint of where the fuck the exit was.

I shook my head, smacking my cheek to get rid of this foggy cloud swirling around my brain.

Why was it so fucking hot in this place? I was sweating to the point that I could see droplets fall off my nose. Finally, I caught sight of that other guard. His black uniform was a beacon in that fucked hallway. Chatter surrounded me, and I realized I was in the cafeteria.

God damnit.

“You okay, bro? You don’t look so good.” I ignored the guard and bumped into him, pushing off his body and past the tables where people were still eating. The paper scrubs brought back memories of the hell of Hospital Twelve, and I didn’t want to fucking see a sea of them.

I growled, seeing a door by the back, pressing forward to smash through it.

I fell forward into a railing out of the back exit, leaving a blaring alarm bell to wail at me because of the security door.

The guard ran forward and tried to get my attention, but I kept walking, gulping the fresh air like I was starved in a desert. He must have used some key or code because the annoying shrill noise stopped, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I followed the line of the railing, leading me down a flight of concrete steps and into a big plaza that had a turf playing field complete with a basketball hoop and weight station.

More guards at the large gate at the end of the recess area looked at me like I was an escapee. I couldn’t form any other words than “Fuck off.”

One of them chased me while the other went to his radio.

After a minute of chasing my ass down the pavement and into the parking lot, I heard the other guard holler for the other man to stand down, and finally I was free of that place.

I still couldn’t calm my beating heart. It felt like cymbals inside my chest, banging around and making my teeth chatter. My eyes were burning, and the liquid was running down my cheeks.

A new yellow pole that showed dumbass cars where to stop practically tripped me, so I sat down and leaned against it. There was a parking garage just a few feet away, but as dizzy as I felt and how blurred my vision had become, I doubted I would make it to my truck.

I held my chest, trying to smack the damn thing into submission.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a red light blinking in the darkness of the car garage.

I squinted, trying to cup my hands over my eyes to block out the sun and see what it was.

A flash blinded me more before strawberry blonde hair came into view, the red light on the device disappearing as she ran.

Even with my heart beating to a painful rhythm and my breath feeling like I was inhaling broken shards of glass, I smiled, finding the strength to push myself off the ground.