The One to Leave

And all I see from Charles Robert is that smile.  Arctic eyes gentle as Guan Yin, and yet he wouldn’t show a single tooth.  And the ends of his mouth had curled up like some nineteenth-century photograph that got lost in a flood.  That smile was fake.  Faker than a rubber frog.  And then he started staring at the ground like he was guilty of murdering his parents.

Did you want me to go all this time, Rob?  Did you want me to just go away?  After all the planning it took to see this through?  And we didn’t even succeed in getting our point across.  We sliced every third hostage’s throats.  We stole all the weaponry in the entire prison.  We even took Sylvest hostage.  And we didn’t even succeed.

Well, someone has to go, I whisper to myself.  And then Rob glanced at me.  Just like that.  Like some homeless person sleeping on a stoop in some big city at night.  With those cold steel eyes pressing against my neck like a machete and those accusing angel fingers knowing that it was you.

You.  You, Tiffany Amber.  You’re the one who has to go.  Wasn’t it Tiffany Amber who gave the signal?  Wasn’t it Tiffany Amber who planned the whole thing like a Founding Father President?  Wasn’t it Tiffany Amber who dreamed up the entire damn riot in the first place?

Isn’t that Tiffany Amber?  You mean the retarded dyke with that junior black belt?  Only a retarded dyke like Tiffany Amber would do that.  Didn’t she flaunt it like Brittany Spears at the school talent show, too?  Isn’t that Tiffany Amber?  You mean that giant five-year-old who thinks she’s Emily Dickinson?  Does she really think she’s good at that stuff, even though her writings are the works of useless cunts?  Isn’t that Tiffany Amber?  You mean the single bitch who likes to read?  Why is she even trying to read?  Doesn’t she get forced into speech therapy half the time?  Seriously—who does Tiffany Amber think she is?  The Queen of England or something?  The retard can’t even tell happy from sad.  Seriously—she should a knife to her throat—those are so easy to get these days, aren’t they—and cut her wind pipe in half because nobody will even bother to come and check on me for too many minutes to even bother counting. And then they snicker.  Snicker like the queen of a pack of hyenas at a baby gazelle.

You wanted to kill those hostages, didn’t you?  You wanted to take Arthur Sylvest hostage, didn’t you?  You wanted to get the rest of us killed, didn’t you?  You probably would have had them castrated and had their testicles put in their mouths.  And masturbated while you watched, and then fuck a couple dozen corpses because you had to carry it to fulfillment.  Aren’t you the one who thinks I can’t do much of anything useful because I freeze into Medusa whenever I see the Y word?  Aren’t you the one who thinks Marigold can’t do much of anything useful because she can’t move a millimeter whenever the wind blows?  Aren’t you the one who thinks all of us are too special to have every last one of us run at once?  No, Tiffany Amber.  Not you in our crematory.  Not you in our ash pile.  Not you in our trenches.  You.  You, Tiffany Amber.  You should go.

But what else did I think would happen?  Of course it would succeed.  Succeed just like the prison takeover at Attica did, that is.  With all those guns firing while locked in spray and pray.  And all those prison guards murdering the very people they were sworn to watch over.  And then the governor and president turn around wondering why people were protesting the prison takeover.  For once the egrets became piranhas and the piranhas became egrets.  For once the prisoners had the guards and the guards had nothing.  For once we were actually doing something to not get killed without even knowing why.  That night the moon was yellow and before seventy-two hours were over all of us can taste the bullets soon to descend on us.

You were right to hate yellow, Rob.  So what that you never noticed or cared?  So what that you never froze into a statue like you looked at Medusa?  So what that all of us were still breathing when the sun came up?  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter that night was the night we took the prison.

And now you’ll probably get a couple dozen bullet holes in your abdomen.  Because the machine guns will probably spray the bullets so fast no one can count how many they’re firing.  Then you’ll probably collapse on the ground, your dozen bullet holes bleeding out half your blood volume.  Only to get thrown into the crematory just the same.  And if you weren’t dead, they’d make you dead—and the best thing you could hope for was that the mustard gas wouldn’t torture him for very long.

I murdered you.  I murdered the only man I’ve ever gotten so close to that I’ve had sex—and more than once, too.  I murdered you and Sylvest and all the other people who are going to die.  And these days, nobody protests in favor of people who take prison commissioners and shoot hostages and murder negotiators.  Of course they’re going to come in with Molotov cocktails and machine guns.  Of course they’re going to smother the air with machine guns.  Of course they’re going to murder a couple hundred people before they’re finished.  What do you want me to do, Rob?  Turn around and watch you bleed out so fast you can hear the blood gushing out?  No—Rob.  Not me.  Yes.  Yes, Rob.  Yes—I do need to go.

All right—I’ll go, I say.  And everybody smiles—all of them genuine as a diamond.  He stands up with the bags in his arms.  Here are the bags of belongings I told you about.