Drown #13: the story we tell, part 6

August 2086. Jeremiah Day is 29. Angelo Shaw is 24. Aliyah Sylvester is 25. Hudson Lawrence is 27.

*** NSFW



Jeremiah drove all through the night to Chicago. He had this all planned out, knowing that once he had Willow, he would be a fugitive for kidnapping. Instead, he didn't have Willow and was a fugitive for other reasons.

He ditched the cheap red van in the parking lot of a supermarket where nobody would notice it for weeks. The vehicle was worth nothing to him.

Then he took a bus to the train station.


"All aboard. The four-fifteen Midwest Orange Line Connector is now departing from Chicago, Illinois to Kansas City, Missouri."



The train rolled out of the station into the darkness of early morning, leaving the bright city and everything else behind them. Leaving behind Willow, leaving his history, leaving everything he thought he would ever be. All that was left of his whole life fit inside this duffle bag. His wedding ring, some pictures of Willow, and all of the money he got from the sale of Stephanie's cabin. He hid the strapped twenty-dollar bills inside of his folded underwear and socks.

Of course, he also had some other things prepared that he would not need. Clothes for a five-year-old girl, some snacks, her birth certificate, a coloring book and some crayons. He brought some drowsy allergy meds in case she was too upset to sleep quietly—he knew that her calm demeanor would have been crucial to their escape, and he was confident that she wouldn't have been upset for very long. They would be starting a brand new life together. They would have so much to look forward to.



But now this could only go one of two ways. Either he got caught, somewhere, sometime, or he got his own fresh start. He couldn't tell now which of those two ways it would go. Maybe it would be a bit of both, ultimately, that he'd think he got away with it all for a while and then—bam, game over. He would count his days of freedom like a man dying of something terminal.


Twenty minutes into the ride, a man in the seat across the aisle turned to talk to him. "Heh, looking kind of rough, buddy. Let me guess—'I oughta seen the other guy,' huh? Am I right?"

The man laughed at his own astonishing wit. Jeremiah glared.

"And I bet it was over a girl? I'm right, aren't I? It was over a girl?"

Jeremiah glared.

"Eh, well, kind of looks like you could use some peace and quiet. I'm just gonna..." He shrugged and turned to his wife.


"Get a load of this guy, Donna. Too good for a polite conversation. I was just trying to be neighborly. Nobody takes a joke these days."


The man and his wife continued to debate for most of the journey about the shameful deterioration of friendly discourse in the world, and whether or not it had to do with modern technology, modern parenting, feminism, or genetically modified foods. As far as Jeremiah could tell in the next hour, they never came to a conclusion.





They reached the suburbs of Kansas City shortly before dawn.


Jeremiah took buses from one part of town to another. He avoided the busier bus terminals and waited in the darkened alleyways instead.


He rode buses all morning until he came by a cheap motel in a quiet part of town.


The kind of place where you could pay in cash and they wouldn't ask any questions.


Then he finally slept.




When he woke, late that afternoon, he watched the news for details about his mistakes.

Then he realized that was probably silly. They'd be looking for him locally, maybe. But, in the end, he'd failed to take Willow so there would be no nationwide Amber alert. Had he killed Justin? Maybe. Jeremiah didn't actually know, but he knew that murders happened everywhere, every day, and they were rarely enough to make national news.


He didn't have buzzers, but he found a pair of dull scissors in a drawer and he sheared down his hair as close to the scalp as it would go. It didn't make much of a difference. He wondered if he should grow it long instead? Bleach it blonde? Grow a beard? Gain or lose fifty pounds?


Jeremiah looked at himself hard in the mirror of this drab motel bathroom and he thought about all the choices that led him here.

—

"Fuck me with the blinds open," Aliyah said.

"Shit, baby, you'll love my bedroom," Angelo said. "I don't even own blinds."


Aliyah was her name and she was like heaven on a fudgesicle stick. Angelo wanted to lick every inch of her body. He wanted to swallow her whole. She made him think about marriage like he'd never thought about marriage before. He thought that if he was ever going to get married, he needed to marry a girl who liked to fuck like she did. A girl who arched her back and moaned, deep and guttural, oozing with pleasure. He wanted to fuck her every day of his life until his dick grew old and shriveled up, and even then, he had other body parts that could make her moan like this if she still wanted it, and he hoped she would still want it.

And it was with that thought that his phone rang.

"Don't stop, baby," she begged.


"I'm sorry, I gotta get this. Don't get dressed though, I'm coming back."


It was Jeremiah.

"So, this lawyer-client thing. I think I’m in some trouble. As I understand it, it's your job to help me get in the least amount of trouble possible?"


What an enormous buzz-kill. But Angelo needed to take this call. He'd been waiting to hear from Jeremiah for two days.

"What the actual fuck is wrong with you? You almost killed him!"

"So I take it he's not dead then?"


"What were you thinking? He’s in the ICU, so it must be bad—I'm not family, so they wouldn't tell me anything. The good news, you asshole, is if he doesn’t die they can’t charge you with murder. Not actual murder. The bad news, you asshole, is you almost killed him. So maybe they’ll charge you with attempted murder. Especially since the police have everything. Emergency services heard everything from Willow’s phone, they have your voice trying to coax her into your car, they have you admitting your bloodlust for Justin and then finally the beating. It’s all recorded. Jesus, on your first visitation day."

"The courts were rigged," Jeremiah said.

"Well, great, you just rigged them worse. You tried to take your kid and you beat her stepdad to a pulp. You fucked it all up. I don’t know how to help you. Maybe we can get you a plea deal. As little as ten years if you play it cool. That's if he doesn't actually die."

"As little as?"


"What do you think can happen here? Ten years is nothing versus life. You’re young, you’ll get over it." Angelo tried to brainstorm some ideas. "You’ll turn yourself in. Say you’re sorry, say you acted out, say that you’re still upset about the baby she kept from you. You can plead some personality disorder—I don't know. You cry, beg for therapy, it becomes a mental health issue and not a criminal one. You get low security prison with a shrink, all paid for by the government. You promise to take your meds. There, that’ll work. That’s our story."


"That's not my story," Jeremiah said.

Jeremiah wasn't listening anymore. He wasn't planning to go to jail. What would be the point? Why would he spend three years at war to come home and spend ten more in jail? And that was the optimistic version. All for what? By then, he’d be forty and Willow would be grown up and it would all be over.

He wasn’t ready for it to be over.

"That's what I thought," Jeremiah said. "I was just double checking."


"What? Double fucking checking? Dude, this isn't a pop quiz," Angelo said.

"Yeah, it's been an experience. You won't see me around..."

"What are you doing?"

Click.

"We're not done. You fucker, you still owe me money."

The dialtone played, but Angelo continued to shout into his phone. "You motherfucking prick-cheese weasel—"


Aliyah slid her round, juicy bottom onto the desktop.

"Sorry, baby, I didn't see you there. You didn't hear me say that. And don't tell my momma that I said that. I don't talk like that in front of ladies."

"Are you upset? Can I make you feel better?"


She coiled her toes around his ankle, sliding up and down his leg.

"Whoa. You just gave me an idea. Can I bend you over that desk?"

"Well, you better," she said, "now that you got the idea in my head. You don't wanna tease, do you?"


When they finished, they both showered and dressed. Angelo was going to take this fine woman to meet his mother.

—

The next morning, Jeremiah grabbed his bag.



He wouldn't ever need his phone again.



He caught a bus to the train station.


And he caught the afternoon train out of town. Missouri to Texas. Texas to Arizona.

One ticket, no return.

There was a warrant for his arrest in Michigan for assault and attempted kidnapping. In a few days time, there would be another warrant for his arrest in South Carolina for military desertion.

He'd go somewhere else instead.


The country was big and there were lots of places on the map. Wide, empty places. Desolate places. Places where a guy could be lost.

Maybe they’d catch him some day. But if he had the choice to go to jail now or go later, he'd pick later. He might as well take a chance. A chance was better than nothing. Stephanie had told him to go away and start over again. Maybe he should have listened.


Sierra Nova, Arizona. Jeremiah had never heard of it and knew nobody here, which was why he picked the place. Smack dab in the middle of the desert.

He browsed the pin board at the bus stop outside the community center, and he found a number advertising an apartment for rent. A cheap apartment. Just what he was looking for.


"Like I said, it's nothing fancy. What you see is what you get."

"It’s fine," Jeremiah said.

"So, uh, I didn’t get your name?"

"Jer— um, Jerry. Gerald Wilcox."

"You got an ID, Jerry?"


"I don't," Jeremiah said. "I can't show you one of those. But I do have six months rent up front in cash if you want it."

"Hm…" The landlord considered this. He looked Jeremiah up and down, tried to look him in the soul. "Alright," he said. "No trouble though, you hear? No drugs, no noise, no doing whatever it was that happened to your face. Anyone comes sniffing around here and you’re out."

"Sounds fair enough."

"Keys are on the kitchen counter."


The landlord left and Jeremiah laid down in the center of the room. He'd find a cheap bed somewhere later, or a sleeping bag at least. The carpet was the color of mustard and smelled like freshly shampooed cigarettes. It was hard and colder than the Arizona heat everywhere else. The thin padding seeped straight through from the concrete foundation underneath.

Jeremiah shivered, feeling like someone had just walked over his grave.

—

footnotes: Stephanie told him to start over // So Angelo got that second date then

notes: Ha ha, now I totally need to do a scene of Angelo taking Aliyah to meet his momma. That line just popped up in the writing though, so I haven't done it in game yet.