Rubin woke up on the floor some time later. A rare flutter of relaxation seized him immediately. Followed quickly by a throbbing pain in his chin as his brain woke up entirely. He groaned and stretched his jaw, being sure not to disturb the precious comfort the rest of his body was experiencing. If only ma was here to kiss it. That would make everything better. Wouldn’t it? A heavy ball of guilt settled roughly on his back, using his guilt to pin him to the ground.

“Next time you won’t wake up, you little shit." Ten fat, crooked toes were staring at him when he opened his eyes. They looked like small sausages ready to burst at the seams. He wasn’t sure if his scowl was due to the odor drifting up his nostrils or the sight of the long, yellow nails, thick and jagged, daring clippers to try cutting them.

“I have a thing for feet, but not those nasty things.” Speaking was difficult and painful but he wouldn’t dare miss an opportunity for a snippy comment.

The feet stepped closer. It was then that Rubin realized the room was fully lit. As lit as three candles could light a room anyway. He chose not to verbally acknowledge the presence of the candles but the ideas were already formulating in his mind. He’ll burn like Isaiah. Rest in peace. And soon. Tonight? For punching me. There will be no more punching or choking. Not without a beautiful woman delivering the pain. An image of a special little lady named Monica Therm appeared. He could appreciate Monica’s unique abilities in the bedroom. Two hundred forty-three days without seeing her. I hope she’s still alive.

“Get up.” Theodore’s massive hand clasped a fistful of Rubin’s shirt and yanked him to his feet. He pointed at Rubin’s table. A black tablecloth was draped over the sides. Four thin wooden legs peaked out from underneath it. “I got you some dinner. Eat.”

Rubin flattened out his gray prison uniform and looked at his oversized cellmate. “Making friends with Orin, are you? Candles. Matches. Unscheduled food.” Orin was the frail old man that wandered the corridors, providing inmates with any number of requested items.

“Did I say Orin got you the food?” The chair begged for mercy beneath Theodore’s weight as he took his place at the table. “The matches were yours and I got the candles and food while I was out.” Rubin’s head snapped toward the iron bars. The immovable, unbreakable iron bars that separated him from freedom. Kept him from the blood he desired so badly. They looked no different than usual. Strong and straight. Unwilling to extend the simple courtesy of stepping aside as passerby approached.

“But the bars? How did you?” His voice faded off in confusion.

“Sit. Eat.”

A familiar looking plate rested in front of each seat at the table. On each was a large steak and a baked potato. Two boxes of apple juice sat between the plates that reminded him of elementary school. Several packs of butter were lying haphazardly in the middle of the table. There were no forks. No knives. He didn’t even wonder why.

Rubin took his seat, only slightly pondering the change in his table. He looked at the steak with hopeful desire that it was rare and bloody.

“Ribeyes. Medium well.” Theodore was obviously proud of himself but a tad concerned as well. “They may be a little cold now. You were out for a while.”

Rubin nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the bars again. What a generous meal to give a man whose jaw you practically shattered. He tried clamping his mouth tight before taking a bite and winced in pain. It brought an awkward smile to his face that he was glad Theodore didn’t notice. He had forgotten just how much he liked pain. Still, his stomach was growling at the smell of the meat. He rubbed his chin in hopes it may remedy the issue.

“Sorry about that.” Rubin waved Theodore’s apology off in a dismissive manner.

“So you can bend the bars? Or walk through them. How did you get this food?” Rubin’s words were less than slurred but far from clear. And softer than usual. His voice reminded him of himself. It was unsettling. His mind demanded his focus a moment later. Clear thoughts were formulating for the first time in a long time. And they had nothing to do with blood or death.

Theodore chuckled then clamped his teeth down on the steak and ripped a bite off. He spoke as he chewed. “I wanted to kill you, you know. But the boss wouldn’t have liked none of that.”

“The boss?”

Theodore nodded. “Yeah, he says I gotta keep you alive. Been waiting almost a year for your fucked up brain to click back into place.”

“A year?” Rubin glanced at his marks on the wall across the table as Theodore gestured toward them.

“You should know. You've been marking the days.”

“But you just got here two days ago. I watched them lower you into the cell.”

Theodore clearly had no clue what he was talking about. “Unless I’m the crazy one, I think I’ve been here quite a bit longer than two days. I’ve read damn near every book on your shelf.” He pointed over Rubin’s shoulder.

“But Isaiah. His knife. My knife.” Rubin paused. “Where’s my knife?”

“Relax. It’s on your bed. I don’t know what your fascination with that thing is all about. It’s a horrible knife.”

Rubin’s mind cluttered just a bit with the insult. A friend gave him that knife. A better friend than Theodore could ever be. To anyone. Especially to Rubin. Suddenly, the dark clouds of smoke that had flooded into Rubin’s mind started to spread slowly. The crazy notion that a man named Isaiah had given him the knife slowly disintegrated. Theodore was still blabbering but his words meant nothing. Rubin was attempting to wave away the last bits of haziness from his mind. It was a pesky nuisance though. A wave of his hand here seemed to bring smoke back over there. Endlessly. Then he heard something that lowered his defenses just long enough for the smoke to return in full.

“Your father had no idea how to balance a knife,” Theodore said. The pitifully made weapon lay in front of Rubin now. He glared at his dinner company as he lifted his ribeye to his mouth. Trying to bite into the steak was useless. He left it there awkwardly, sucking on the bloody juices like a drunk begging for a drop of alcohol.

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?” Theodore took another bite out of his own steak. “Your pops gave you that knife. When he visited earlier this year. Not some cat named Isaiah.” Rubin chewed slowly as he listened to Theodore.

“He’s right. Your father couldn’t make anything. Damn fool thought he was a carpenter and a blacksmith combined into one like some kind of brilliant craftsman. The truth is he wasn’t much more than a drunk.” Rubin’s heart sank. He thought he was breaking free of his tortuous visitors.

“Not now, ma.” There was a gentleness to his mother this time. One he hadn’t seen in years.

The soft touch of his mother’s fingers lifted his bruised jaw. She leaned in to kiss away the pain but Rubin leaned back. The heartbreak on his mother’s face came instantly. She stood up straight, still frowning.

“But you’re hurt. You don’t want me to kiss it and make it better?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I’m a grown man, ma.”

“Are you?” His mother’s eyes dragged his own to his hands. They were small. Childish. Innocent. There was no blood on these hands. Not yet.

“Put me back. Now. I’m not your baby anymore.”

“You’ll always be my baby,” she said with a loving smile she used to mask her sadness. Was it his defiance? Or did she know what her baby would grow up to be?

Rubin was on his small feet in a flash and lunging toward the woman but a hand stopped him in his tracks. His ass was glued back in his chair despite his objections. “Settle down. None of that’s real. You know better.” Theodore pointed at the food in front of Rubin. “Eat before it gets cold. I ain’t going back out tonight.”

“How do you know it’s not real?” Rubin asked as he strained to look out of the corner of his eye at his mother.

“I’ve been watching you struggle with your demons long enough to know when they’re here.” This man beside him, who knew nothing of his past, could sense the pain he was going through. The thought sent a chill up Rubin’s spine. He picked up the hefty knife in front of him and felt the weight with a more critical judgment than usual. It was a terrible piece of work. The heavy blade jostled back and forth inside the hilt, the handle was too thick and uncomfortable to hold, and for some damn reason the blade was painted a dark red. Such a choice seemed so idiotic that he wondered if Nigel may have made the blade rather than his father.

“Whoa! What the hell are you doing?" The blade was sliding across the underside of Rubin’s right arm. Blood began to drip from the wound onto his steak.

“It’s mine or yours,” Rubin said. There was no sense of a threat to be found yet it was also difficult to make the words sound playful. Theodore stared. He came clean. “Believe me, I’d prefer it be yours. But we can’t have everything we want, can we?”

Theodore grabbed what was left of his meal and stood up. “Fix that fucking brain of yours so we can get the hell out of here.”

Rubin was left to himself at the table. He stared at the blood-soaked steak with a frown on his face and his head slouched to one side just enough to be excessive.

“Help me.” There was no answer. “Help me, Theodore.”

“Can’t you shut the hell up for a few hours? Without being knocked out.”

“Help me.”

“With what?”

“Fixing myself.” Rubin glanced over his tense shoulder with a demeanor reserved for a paranoid burglar looking for curious eyes. Theodore was lounging on his bed slab comfortably, his baked potato held loosely in his hand like a pudgy popsicle, his eyes fixated on the potato as if it was the finest thing he’d ever seen. A corresponding grin on his lips.

“Sorry, can’t help you with that. I tried for months when I first got here. Ain’t happening. Just keeping an eye on you now.”

“Try harder!” What was left of Rubin’s connection with reality immediately scolded himself. He stared back down at the untouched steak drenched in his own blood.

Theodore’s next words sounded like a mixture of being slurred and cut in half as he struggled with the potato's intense heat. “I-ai’-try’n-to-fix-shit-fo-you.” He managed to swallow the food. A moment of relief and silence came from the other side of the room. “Not anymore. You gotta solve your issues on your own, Bloodbath.”

“Bloodbath.” Rubin looked across the table to see his brother, Nigel, cutting into a steak of his own. The walls of the cell faded briefly, returning as the dully decorated walls of his parent’s small house on Shienna Street. Pictures of their family from his youth, pictures of relatives he had and had not met, a picture of his parents on their wedding day. One picture in particular stood out above all the others. A hand drawn image of his mother, drawn by Nigel when he was a child. It was practically perfect. Every detail depicted, down to the length of her eyelashes and the size of her dimples. Rubin hated it. He hated them all. Now. “You go by Bloodbath now?” Nigel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The meaty bite he had taken a moment before was still bubbling his cheek in a less than handsome fashion. Typical for the tactless fool. Their eyes met. “Must say, that is an accurate nickname for you.”

“Isn’t it though? And who helped me achieve such an honor?” Rubin sneered at his brother.

“But who gave it to you? Those thugs you call friends? That woman that pushed you over the edge?”

“I did. As I licked your blood from my fingers and spit on your lifeless corpse.” Rubin stared intently. At one point in their life it may have been a harmless game, this intense staredown. But it was anything but a game now. This was a show of dominance. Rubin never lost then, he damn sure wouldn’t lose now. Even if the truth was that he couldn’t remember where the nickname had originated.

Nigel shook his head. “Dead body. Dead body is all you have to say, you flowery fuck. Do you honestly think dad would say lifeless corpse?” Silence. “Talk like him! Force yourself to remember him!” The image of Nigel began to fade away but his voice remained strong as he continued to scream at Rubin. “Force yourself to remember him! Remember her! Remember what you did to us!”

Rubin snapped around. “Bloodbath.”

There was a careful excitement on Theodore’s face. A heavy undertone of skepticism just as visible. “Yup.”

“And you are…”

“Blitz.”

“Blitz. And Ace. My men.” Rubin swept his index finger along the cut on the bottom of his forearm and stuck his finger in his mouth. He pulled it out with a sarcastic kissing sound and a wry smile. “It’s time to go.” His bulky henchman stood from his bed and tossed what was left of his potato on the floor.

“About damn time, sir.”

“Bend the bars.”

Blitz pointed over Rubin’s shoulder. He knew before he turned. The walls around him were no longer stone but rather a creamy-looking plaster. They were decorated with posters and jerseys of his favorite athletes when he was a child. On the wall, across the small desk he had used for homework, were two hundred forty-three tally marks. Written in pencil above them, the words, Days until Christmas. Only now did his less than efficient way of counting down annoy him. When he turned there were no iron bars, only a mahogany door, visibly open and most certainly unlocked.

“You stayed the whole time?”

“Other than to get food or the occasional issue outside.”

Rubin looked down at his clothes. He was still wearing the gray, standard-issued prisoners uniform he had surely received at Barico Island Penitentiary. Blitz clearly noticed his observation.

“You spent about twelve hours in there. Would have been less but you fought me tooth and nail about leaving. Had to carry you out on my shoulder when I finally had enough.”

Rubin grinned. “You’re a good man, Theodore.” He paused for a moment as reality flooded back into his mind. “Now, let’s go find him.”

Blitz walked toward him. “There’s one thing I’ve gotta do first.” He placed his giant hand on Rubin’s head and pressed it toward the desk. His sausage-like fingers scraped at Rubin’s neck. Rubin winced as the fingers fiddled clumsily at the scab he had been so protective of for months. There was a cracking sound and then a wave of clarity washing over him. Blitz stepped away.

The loyal lackey looked at the small mind-altering device that had been placed in Rubin’s neck at the penitentiary. “Fuckin’ thing. Inhumane if you ask me. Who’s the better man? The one who commits the heinous crime or the one who makes the man relive it day after day?” He crunched the device and tossed it aside.

Rubin rubbed the back of his neck. An image of his mother appeared. One with no thoughts, no voice. One he could control. Guilt filled him. “A good question. A very good question.”

“Come on,” Theodore said. Ace is waiting downstairs.”

The brute was almost through the door when Rubin stopped him. “Theodore.”

His lackey turned. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you just take the device out a long time ago?”

“Ace said you had to beat it on your own. So when they lock you up next time it won’t do much good. Dangerous lifestyle we live. Ace and I might not be around to help you next time.” Rubin shuttered at the thought of losing more loved ones.

“Thank you, Theodore.”

“Don’t mention it.”