Jealous Much? – Chapter 1

THE BEGINNING

I shared my cell with another “killer”. He went by so many names. “Terror”, “El diablo”, “The devil” but frankly I think he was just misunderstood. He just needed someone to cure him of his life. And since I needed to make my statement, it appeared that the devil and I could help each other. He sat quietly at his side of the cell, staring blankly at me. I felt like he knew I was his saviour or maybe he was trying to intimidate me, I couldn’t really say. After we had locked eyes for a few seconds, it was clear what I needed to do. Sadly, I had only my hands and the devil was a much bigger man than I was. My odds were slim but I couldn’t last another second without seeing her face so it was either I ended him or he ended me. Either way, it was a win for me. I got up and walked calmly towards the devil, he seemed to smile as I drew nearer, there were no words but our silence spoke volumes, he knew exactly why I was coming. He pulled out an item from beneath his shirt.

It was a toothbrush with a sharpened handle. Without warning he thrust it forward at my abdomen but I was quick enough to get out of the way. He came at me again with his balled-up fist this time, missing my face he hit the wall. That gave me the space to kick the toothbrush from his hand and land a blow on his jaw. He looked up at me with a very surprised look on his face, I don’t think he had ever been hit before, and then he looked back at the ground where his brush had fallen and he went for it.

I followed behind him wrapping my right arm around his neck and squeezing it tight. He jammed his toothbrush into my arm with one hand and tried to free himself with the other. I’d never seen so much of my blood before, it felt odd to know that I could indeed bleed. He jammed it in again and I had taken enough. I pushed my left middle finger into his left eye socket. It felt so wet and squishy. I pushed even deeper and blood began to flow, I freed up my bleeding right hand and did the same to his right eye socket. He finally caught hold of me and threw me off.

But the devil was now blind and slashing blindly at the air, it was only fair that I finished him off now, so I knocked the brush off his hand and pushed it into his skull through the bottom of his large jaw. And then I did it again, and again, and again. It took a while before the devil stopped moving, but he laid there, motionless. I pulled out the brush and began to paint her lovely name on the rough prison wall.

…

Maria sat before me with a smile I knew too well. She wore the black dress I got her for her birthday last year, it’s weird how new it still looked. Wardens stood at both my sides, they had chains all over me, being extra careful with me because apparently, I was “dangerous”. After the incident with the devil, I became quite famous in the prison, all the others respected even the dust beneath my shoes. I was at the top of the food chain now, even the wardens feared me. It had been 15 days since the death of the devil and they finally brought her to me. All it took was 15 days of endlessly shouting her name through the small window in the prisoner detention block. I knew they’d get tired eventually.

There she was, in her black dress, looking as beautiful as the day I first set eyes on her, smiling at me with lips that beckoned on mine to touch them once more.

“Hello my love”, her words echoed throughout the very frame of my being, I had missed that voice so much. I smiled back at her without saying a word.

“Oh, how much I’ve missed you”, she said, while keeping her eyes focused on mine. Then she leaned over the table to touch my face.

“That’s enough ma’am”, one of the wardens said sternly while grabbing on to her wrist. She looked at his hand on her wrist, looked at his face and then looked at me. I turned my gaze towards the guard who instinctively looked back at me, he let go of her hand but never took his eyes off mine, I of course didn’t take my eyes off his; I wanted him gone. I wanted him deleted from the surface of this planet. Cut off from whatever his frail mind understood to be reality.

I felt her soft hands on my cheeks, turning my head to face her.

“Let it go baby”, she said as she leaned in closer, joining her lips and mine. Energy coursed through my veins at the union of our lips, I felt whole again. And then she stopped and looked me square in the face and said “I love you”. I smiled at her and she smiled back as she sat in her chair.

“T…Time to go ma’am”, the warden said as he offered to help her stand up, before looking back at me and correcting himself.

She waved goodbye and blew kisses at me. I felt the piece of cardboard paper Maria had put into my mouth while she kissed me and as she exited the room, I spat it out onto the table.

It landed flat on the table with the words “GET READY” written on it. As I read those words the prison alarm went off.

Maria was at it again, only time could tell what she had planned. The second warden who barely said a word while she sat there, had gone into a state of panic, “this isn’t happening”, he kept whimpering to himself while taking short sharp glances at me.

I sat in the chair trying to steady myself for anything, I expected an explosion to occur very soon, it was always Maria’s way of doing things. She always loved a fiery room littered with bodies. As expected, the door leading outside went off, sending pieces of wood darting through the air, I fell with the chair using it as a shield to block the incoming shrapnel. Just as soon as I hit the ground, the panicking warden followed suit, except his was a more involuntary fall. He had taken a piece of partially burnt wood to the chest. He was spewing blood all over the place. Not the nastiest thing I’d seen but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either.

After freeing myself from my shackles with the now dead warden’s key, I made my way swiftly towards the exploded door. I was sure Maria would be on the other side, smiling her victory smile. I was sure as hell going to give her a piece of my mind for almost killing me. I got outside and I was greeted warmly but not by Maria. The men pointed to the prison yard gate and motioned for me to move.

The path was littered with dead guards, these guys definitely weren’t here to play, I started to doubt if they were indeed helping me or leading me into a trap. Maria could not have been able to afford this much fire power. They were like a small army, was my beloved some kind of godmother that I didn’t know of?

The air seemed fresher outside the prison walls, a certain sense of freedom swept over me followed by an even stronger sense of danger, I needed to find Maria. I turned back to face the man behind me and try to get him to tell me where she was but my face was greeted with the butt of his rifle.

“Keep moving worm!”.

This was definitely no rescue; these men were here for something else. I got to the back of what I assumed was the getaway van and I was shoved from behind, into the van, followed almost immediately by two of the men. One was really bulky and fierce looking, as for the other, I could have sworn that I was looking at the devil. My thoughts were ended with a thundering blow to my jaw knocking me out cold.