Loops For James Malltano

I woke up to air that was the beginning of a string of 30 degree starts we were supposed to have that week. As I felt that reality, I stuffed my arms under the blankets and just listened to the alarm. Rick gently shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see him fully clothed and with his lunch pail in hand.

           “Hey, I’m headed out,” he said.

           While the information came slowly, the result hit me like a truck and I sat up so fast, I saw those dark spots in my eyes. One looking like a dark outline of a man among them; he was standing at the end of the bed for a moment. Then vanished with a blink.

           “What time is it!?” I gasped.

           “8:30.”

           “Oh, mother fucker!”

           I leapt out of bed without even noticing the cold air at that point. As I scrambled for my clothes, I just kept cursing at myself. Saying you lazy bitch, you just fucked yourself out of a morning again, good work.

           In my panicked rush I didn’t even see Rick slowly backing to the door. He gave me a short wave and turned.

           “Alrighty well, good luck,” he said.

           “Can you turn the coffee pot on!” I yelled.

           “Yup, it’s already going!” he called up the stairs. “Love you!”

           I was so busy looking through the sock drawer and hell bent on chewing myself out that I didn’t hear him.

           “I said I love you! June! June!”

           “What!?” I yelled, and looked up at my sunken eyes and sprawling hair in the mirror, for a second that same black outline appearing behind me I rubbed my eyes and it vanished.

           “I said, I love you!”

           “Yea, love you too!”

           Then I took off running for the bathroom.

           I ended up in the car showered, with a cup of coffee, and no workout under my belt about 20 minutes later. My gaslight turned on about ten minutes into the drive and I had no idea how long it’d been on. What I did know was that the meter was in the red already, and dipping over into nothing.

           At that point, I started to get that numb with anger feeling you get when something is really bad. I’m gonna be late, and that was that was how I eventually saw it. I pulled into a gas station down and as I reached for my wallet, there was a knock on my window. A man in a fluorescent vest was waiting for me.

           “How much?”

           “Just fill it please,” I said handing him my card.

           “Could you unlock the gas cap?”

           I pushed the button and rolled the window back up.

As I waited, everything slowed way down. I listened to the radio talking about some new kind of prisoner rehabilitation methods that were being introduced up state. It all seemed very sci fi esk to me, talking about dreams or memories. Supposedly there were people calling it barbaric and cruel. I tried to listen to the science behind it but once again, that dark smug came back into my vision. I just ignored it as I knew it was probably something in my contact. This is probably the 4^th time this week I’d had a morning like this, I thought as I listened. That fact grew to be extremely depressing, like it doomed me too more.

I sipped my coffee, and thought at the very least I have Rick in my life. While this had happened 4 times this week, he’d always come in clutch with making sure at least the coffee was ready when I rushed down stairs. I thanked him under my breath as I watched the cars and the radio played. Now if he could just drag me out of bed when he gets up, he’d really help me out… oh shit his birthday is coming up soon, I realized. I looked at my phone and saw I had about a week to think of some-

           The passenger door opened and closed before I even had time to look up. The gas station attendant was sitting next to me with a smirk on his face.

           “Start driving please,” he said calmy.

           My grip on the phone suddenly tightened, the same pressure came to my throat.

           “I’m sorry?”

           “Start. Driving. Please,” he said.

           I noticed the jagged shape under his vest then, the circular edge of a barrel partially out with his hand running in behind the fabric.

           Everything sped up suddenly, it sped up faster than all my rushed mornings combined. And at the same time, I wanted to move very still.

           “Please, please I’m just trying to-”

           “-I don’t care what you’re trying to do. Drive the car ahead. And turn around. I filled up the tank.”

           My toes tapped fast next to the gas pedal; my palms started to get clammy.

           “Alright. You see this?” the man said as he pulled his hand out.

           I’d only seen the black handle of the firearm before I jumped and pressed my back into the driving side door. My instinct told me to run, but his hand quickly jumped over and was pressing down on my seat belt.

           “You know what this is?” he asked jiggling the gun. “It’s a .22 caliber. Which means I could poke you full of all 15 holes this thing is capable of, and no one in this gas station would ever hear a thing.

           My heart was racing so fast it felt like it might become dislodged. I don’t know why, but I nodded to him and he nodded back. That black smug coming into my vision beyond him.

           “Do you want that?”

           I felt like I couldn’t speak to him. I knew I was about to cry but I wasn’t sure if that would make him shoot me to. He hadn’t blinked since I’d look in his face. His eyes were blood shot and the hand that held the gun was wrapped in a bandage.

           “No,” I said.

           “Then start. Fucking. Driving.”

           I turned around and we drove in complete silence back the way I’d come. I glanced over from time to time and saw he’d put the seat back, the gun still pointed at me but his eyes dead focused ahead of him. The silence was almost more terrifying because it was letting my mind run. He’s gonna kill me, I thought, he’s taking me somewhere to kill me and then dump my body. I tried to think of ways out of this. Focusing on that fact didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Ideas started to sprout up like I couldn’t stop them. I could crash the car! Get away in the wreck while he’s stunned. But it suddenly seemed stupid, we were driving in a fairly wooded area where the car wouldn’t go far in a crash. Even if he did get stunned by the crash, what was stopping him from just shooting me before that? Or worse running me down himself after and shooting me in the woods? I shifted to more risky options. Should I go for the gun? I can grab it but… I risked a glance over again mid thought. He was sitting with his back pressed to the doors, the gun tucked tight to his chest. I’d never grab it before he got a few shots off. I could flag somebody! I waited for another car to come by and planned to flash my lights at them as many times as I could. Do I know of any speed traps? I could speed and get pulled over-.

           “Turn here,” the man suddenly said.

           On our right there was an old logging road, or maybe a four-wheeler path that went up into the woods.

           “I don’t think we’ll”-

           - “Turn. Here.”

           I turned onto the road slowly. Hearing the cars undercarriage scrap on the rise as it jostled us back and forth, almost like a boat on rough water. As I drove it felt like I’d passed through a curtain of reality. There weren’t any speed traps out here, we weren’t going fast enough for a crash to stun anyone, and he was still scrunched over in the car. He’s gonna to kill me, I thought again. Or rape me…is it wrong that that almost seems better? In that moment all I could think about was how do I just get through this alive. How do I get out of this without it being the last day I’d ever seen Rick or the kids again. Oh god I hadn’t even seen them leave for school; Rick had done that. I felt my tears coming up, it was getting harder to breath. That dark shape was ahead of me, and I thought it looked so much like a man, with a plump belly in a suit staring at me. Floating in a place that didn’t make any sense.

           “Alright stop here,” he said.

           We stopped and he pulled the key out and turned to me, the gun never leaving his belt buckle.

           “Look…look I don’t know what I’ve done, or what you’re planning on doing. But”-

           “I want you to get in the back seat,” he said.

           He stared at me, with this expression that felt like he was trying to peel my skin off with his eyes. I didn’t freeze for too long before I just did what he said, climbing over the middle section into the back. He walked around the outside of the car and joined me. My eyes were locked on something on the bottom floor of the van. It was my son’s SpongeBob watch. He’d asked me last night before I tucked him in where he’d left it. I’d told him I didn’t know, but in reality, I just wanted to go to bed. I should have looked for it harder. I should have actually cared to look in the first place.

When he sat down next to me, I tried not to cry. When he started to speak, I noticed his voice had changed. He sounded very punctual and matter of fact setting the gun on his lap.

           “Relax. I’m not gonna kill you.”

           I didn’t believe him.

           “I’m not gonna kill you. If. You do exactly what I say. And how I say it. And I mean exactly how I say it. You understand?”

           He seemed genuine with how he talked. All kinds of strange thoughts started to come to me about what he meant, and I straightened in my seat with my hands wrapped around my knees.

           “What do you want?” I asked him.

           But I already knew…he had a look in his eye that told me. He was touching himself in a place that only made sense for one thing.

           “I want you to not fight me. But I don’t want to act like I forced you either, I’m not a fucking rapist. I want you to be a whore. To like it. You do that. I’ll let you go. Got me?”

           I paused, and stared at him seeing that skinning expression still there in his eyes. He was serious, I thought. Ok, I mean… I don’t want to…I really don’t want to. But I want to live. I don’t want to die here. The fact that I even considered it felt wrong to me, it felt like I was doing something that I shouldn’t. Is that cheating? I thought. I wanted nothing more than to just leap out of the car and run. To even be thinking about this was making my body coil in disgust. I was still frozen thinking about what that would be like, and at the same time so scared to even move that I didn’t think I was even capable of it.

           “Well?” he asked angrily

           “I…what do you want me to”-

           His teeth gritted and his eye’s turned furious at me.

           - “God damnit! I said I want you to act like a whore!”

           His hand came so fast I didn’t even see it. It sent my head slamming into the head rest. It knocked a tear loose and I grabbed my cheek in shock.

           “What?! I’m sorry I just…I can’t I’m married-,”

           He hit me again. This time with a closed fist and my head rocked back and slammed against the window. A throbbing pain started. I felt blood run down the back of my throat with that iron taste. It poured from my nose like a faucet when I straightened, tears rolled down my cheeks in the same fashion. The rage I saw in him was unlike anything I’d seen in a person before. He was screaming at his hands; his blood shot eyes wide and wild. I was frozen; I couldn’t think or move or even start to imagine what he wanted anymore. He didn’t look sane, he didn’t look like anything I said could help, he looked rabid.  

           “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Stop fucking crying! Just be a fuckin whore!”

He slammed his fist down on me again.

 “Why can’t you just be a fucking slut!”

           I saw this fist coming and I raised my arms, but it curved around and hit me in the cheek again. It rocked my jaw and I felt one of my teeth was hanging on by a thread. The torrent of punches came so fast and seemingly from all sides that I just wrapped my arms over my head and tried to survive. At one point, I blacked out, and awoke with my face pulsing with bursts of sharp pain. He was on top of me, taking me while I’d been unconscious. He must have seen me look at him because his hands clasped around my neck, the pressure was like a vise and heard him growling down at me.

           “Fucking whore, you’re all just a bunch of whores.”

           I couldn’t fight him, my arms felt like they were a thousand pounds and I just kept telling myself that I wouldn’t die here. That no matter what he did to me I’d live, I’d see the kids, I’d see Rick. On the floor I saw the SpongeBob watch getting blurrier and blurrier. The dark spot of a man down next to it. I’m not gonna die, I’m not gonna die.

           I drifted in and out of reality so much that whenever the pain wasn’t there, there was darkness, but ahead of me was always that black splotch that dark outline of a man watching this happen.

           At one point, as I tried to open my swollen eyes, he climbed off me. Cold air wrapped over my naked body. He knelt over me; holding something in my direction and finally I realized it was the dark circular form of a barrel.

           I’m not gonna die-

           “-End it there,” Warden Harlen said.

           The man behind the control panel ended the simulation.

           “There was about forty-eight seconds left sir,” the technician said.

Warden Harlen approached the tank in front of him. Looking inside, he saw the head of James Malltano. His eyes covered by the optical mounted reality constructors, that looked like a pair of googles that had been surgically attached to his face.

“It was enough,” he said looking over him.

From James perspective, the images had stopped. Ahead all he saw was the same blurry dark outline of a plump man standing in front of him, his hands tucked neatly into his pockets. The surges of pain from his own mad animal beating were still faintly there on his face in a strange way.

           “Did you feel it, James?” Harlan asked. “Did you feel what she did? Up to the very last moment?”

           James wanted to yell, to scream at this man to let him go. What kind of hell is this? Are you the devil? He’d felt every pain the woman had, every time he hit her, raped her, as well every thought, every fear, even the gratitude as she looked at her coffee thankful her husband was in her life. His head felt like it was on fire and expanding all the same. The feelings like numb sensations still lingering.

           “Imagine that being the last thing you felt. Those being the last thoughts you had in your life. Oh, what am I saying, of course you know, you just had it happen yourself. You see that’s what we do here James. We don’t lock you in a box and give you three meals a day, no, no…no that’s a thing of the past. Here, you learn the true pain of what you did. You feel it like it like your victims felt it, how they suffered. Would you like to feel it again?”

           James felt like he was swinging at the man, trying to claw his eyes from his skull and roaring at him. But the man was just standing there, unfazed by anything he did.

           “What do you want to do with him?” The technician asked.

           Warden Harlen leaned away, and looked back to the screen above.

           “Start his sentence. Shelve him, and start with 5,000 loops of this one. Then put him on another of his victims for another 5,000.”

           “You got it,” the technician said. “Oh uh, hang on.”

           “What?”

           “Nothing, I think he’s just getting a bit of visual bleed through; I can see you on the camera. I just gotta recalibrate…alright that’ll work.

           James screamed in horror now in a voice that even he could hear. The goggles screwed down tighter into his eye socks with a machinery’s whine. He kicked, beat, and roared till his throat would have ripped its vocal cords, but it didn’t matter. Every motion he had was a phantom one.

“Booting now,” The tech said.

“Have a pleasant stay, Mr. Malltano.”

And just like that, James Malltano started his sentence.