The Beasts of Juarez by R.B. Schow (best books to read for beginners txt) 📕

“Anything is possible.”

“You need to come back to reality. Your life is over. I’m done. This marriage is done.”

“I told Rocco if he ever hurts you, I’m going to beat him to death. I just want you to know that I mean it.”

“He’s good to me.”

“So was Santa Claus,” he said.

“God, you’re still a child,” she said. “Just sign the papers, alright?”

“What about Alabama?”

Mention of their missing daughter startled her. At that moment, something dark and unpleasant dawned on him: Jade never intended to bring up Alabama. She came there only to discuss the divorce.

“Don’t say her name,” she whispered.

“She’s still alive.”

“Yes, Atlas, but where?”

“How do I know?” he asked.

“I want to know how you got that picture,” she said in English, her words sharp, her tone aggressive.

“It was sent to me,” he said, purposely being vague.

“By whom?”

“A guy looking into things for me.”

“That guy from Vacaville PD?” she asked. “Foster Truitt?”

“No, not him. I can’t believe you’d just write her off like that for this…this…”—he glanced at Rocco and wanted to kill the guy—“this brainless candy-ass fucking twat.”

“Rocco’s smart in his own way.”

“He sure knows how to wear a perm well.”

“You want to make fun of people’s appearances, Atlas?” she asked with fire in her voice. “What’s with your stupid hair? And that lumberjack’s beard?”

“Alabama is alive,” he said, letting that sink in. “Doesn’t that register with you? She’s alive Jade.”

All of her youthful beauty seemed to vanish and that weary, broken look she wore for so long returned with a vengeance. “I’m so tired, Atlas.”

“As am I.”

“We have to let her go.”

Staring at her in disbelief, burning holes in her with his eyes, he felt the adrenaline hit his bloodstream like a jackhammer. “I will NEVER let her go!” he yelled, his volume rising beyond what he was told by the guards was acceptable.

Beside him, a few feet away, one of the guards said, “Cool it, Atlas. I’m not kidding!”

Ignoring both the guard and Atlas—almost like she had planned the speech and was unmoved by his outburst—Jade said, “I’m only saying that we worried ourselves sick about her when there was really nothing more we could do. She’s gone, Atlas. We can’t find her. It’s time to let go and live.”

He shot out of his chair and started punching the Plexiglas barrier over and over and over again, spittle and foul, embarrassing curse words landing on the clear shield like an affront to everything good, moral, and sane. Several old cuts opened up on his knuckles, each and every punch leaving blood splotches all over the glass as he raged.

Dancing between worlds, he spiraled into a different place, a dark place, a bottomless pit so deep he could not be reached, saved, or stopped.

The stun gun’s darts pierced his skin, filling him with electricity. His muscles squeezed tight with convulsions, and then he fell over sideways, crashing to the floor like an invalid. The physical pain was instantaneous, but it was nothing compared to the idea that Jade had given up on Alabama. Their child was still alive!

While being cuffed for the return trip to his cell, Atlas turned his neck despite his ultra-tight muscles. He did this in time to see an upset-looking Jade being escorted out of the facility by Rocco. Mr. GQ glanced over at him and Atlas tried flipping him the bird. His muscles were still too tight, so the gesture fell flat of its intended purpose.

The guard pulled him to his feet. “After your earlier incident, Warden Dicampli said that if you step out of line again—even if you fall outside the lines by a ball hair’s width, which you just did—you’re going back in the hole.”

“Warden Dicampli is a bitch,” Atlas said, his words slurring a bit.

“Be that as it may, there’s a ten-foot by ten-foot cube of utter, dismal darkness with your name written all over it.”

Atlas forced himself to wait out the effects of the high-voltage wake-up call. When he could speak with reasonable clarity, he said, “If Baxter so much as touches my bed, you tell him I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands and eat what’s left of him for breakfast.”

“Sure you will,” the guard said with a hint of laughter in his voice. “It’ll be a wonderful fanboy moment, a way to pay tribute to your cannibal crush.”

“You tell him!” he barked, his inner monster back in the driver’s seat.

The guard escorted him straight to the hole, ordered him to strip down to nothing then shoved him inside where it was pitch-black and cold.

“Warden Dicampli said he wants you to have the sock again.” The guard then picked up one of Atlas’s socks and threw it at him.

If there was one thing Atlas appreciated from the warden, it was the sock. He could sleep on it the first day, maybe even the second day as well, and when he was finally forced by his body to drop that deuce, he had something clean and soft for that first, dangerous wipe.

For a short while, the sock was comfort, the sock was dignity.

Instead of lamenting his situation, he stalked into the darkness, and then he dropped down and started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and planks.

“See you in a couple of months,” the guard finally said.

“Not if I see you first,” he mumbled.

The last two times Atlas was thrown into the hole, the guards vowed to stop talking to him. They were his only lifeline to the outside world. With that single crappy pact, these same guards severed his last link to humanity. He had never felt more alone in his life. But even though this two-month stint would test him mentally, physically, and emotionally, he vowed to grind out the time like a man. After that, he would