Phoenix Noir

rattled against the wall. Eddie straddled her, not thinking, just swinging. He let the Fury work through his muscles with each satisfying thunk until his rage was spent. That’s when he looked down and saw that he was still holding the bottle. Unlike Cheryl’s face, it was intact. Goddamn. Old Granddad sure knew his stuff. Eddie tipped back the bottle and took a long hard pull before passing out.

So maybe he hadn’t meant to do her all the way. Wasn’t like he could take it back. And damned if he was going to start crooning like a fish on his first night in stir, begging for a second chance. Accident or not, Eddie knew if he were given another chance, he’d beat the shit out of her a second time.

Judge knew it too. That raven-eyed executioner sat high up on his throne, hair so slick and shiny he might have been wearing a cowl over his long black robe. Even his smile was more warlock than magistrate, a greedy thing that seemed to anticipate the inevitable sentence.

Eddie held the judge’s baleful gaze, unflinching, grinning at his inquisitor through the old scar that split his lips. Eddie craned his neck so the swastika brand showed over the collar of his white shirt and kept his fists bunched on the defense table, blue-inked knuckles facing forward: FURY.

The judge gave Eddie a look of pure indulgence.

“Tell me, Mr. Keane. What made you this way?”

“What way is that, Your Honor?”

“Maybe it’s better you don’t know. You’re twenty-eight years old. What if I give you twenty years to come up with the answer?”

“Wow,” Eddie aped. “That’s like a whole ’nother life.”

Something sharp and dangerous flickered behind the judge’s opaque eyes. For a fleeting second Eddie actually felt the stab of it, an invisible hook piercing deep.

“Exactly,” the judge said. “Another life.”

Prison sounds pushed out of the darkness, a jumble of clangs, shouts, and overlapping voices that dissolved the mocking tone of the judge’s voice. Life? Fuck you, Hoodoo Man. Prison don’t scare me.

“What you saying, bitch?” The terse shout exploded in Eddie’s ears. Without warning a pair of hands slammed him backwards. “I cut you, puta. Then we see who’s scared.”

Eddie crashed into a wall of bodies. More hands caught him, kept him from falling. He jerked around to see a blur of hard, half-remembered faces yelling encouragement. A flat steel object was shoved into his palm. “Take the greaser out, Eddie! Shank his ass!” He was propelled toward his opponent, a squat Latin killer stripped to the waist, La Eme brands and prison tats stretched over exaggerated muscles. And Eddie realized he was standing in the middle of a memory.

The men surrounding him weren’t the ones doing time with him now; this place wasn’t the Special Management Unit where he spent twenty-three hours a day in lockdown. None of this was now. It was four years ago, Florence, Central Unit. Small-time drug dispute between gangs on the outside, Eddie tapped by the AB to settle it inside.

Mind reeling, he watched the Mexican bob and weave in front of him, stick razor flashing. He remembered the spic’s name. El Gato. But unlike the first time they squared off, Eddie’s reflex was disbelief. “No way this is happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening, ese. Tell me you don’t feel this.” The Mexican lunged and Eddie screamed, the blade slicing across his face. Liquid fire filled his mouth. The meat of his shredded lips bounced against his teeth and puffs of air seeped through a hole in his cheek.

“Now, I cut that teardrop off your face, pendejo.”

This isn’t real! It’s the past! Eddie’s brain screamed. But the pain was real. Same for Eddie’s reaction, the surge of strength, the narrowing of vision, and the dark detachment as the Fury took over.

He let the spic have his second of victory, then struck from a crouch, twisting his own blade into the Mexican’s middle. El Gato looked down, mystified, battle forgotten as astonished fingers tried to rejoin the severed green lines of tattoos over a bulging white ribbon of muscle. Eddie charged. Stick, stick, stick! He followed the Mexican to the cement. Shouts erupted. A siren went off. Someone yelled, “Guards!” Eddie shook off the warning and rose over the spic’s body. He coughed up a ball of blood and tissue, spat the clotted mess onto the dead guy’s upturned face. “Gato, shit!” he screamed. “Pussy!”

Eddie’s mind unzipped.

The kill scream was still tearing out of his throat when his senses went black and a ripping sound filled his head. Shit just opened up, Eddie thought. Reality evaporated. Gone went the fight scene, the mad crush of inmates, the warble of alarms. One instant Eddie was breathing blood over the spic’s body, the next he was back in a cell, staring into a mirror.

And crazy stared back at him.

Eddie leaned into the strip of sheet metal above the cell’s sink, not trusting the reflection. He recognized the face but it belonged to someone else, some other Eddie.

The knife wound was gone.

No bloody track. No itch of stitches. No trace of the jagged white scar. He could still feel the icy kiss of El Gato’s razor. Remembered the patchwork repair job by prison docs and the forever-after taste of antiseptic.

But the reflection face was unmarred, as if the fight never happened.

“Keane! Visitor!” Eddie jumped away from the mirror. The CO stood three paces from the bars, khaki-bland, indifferent. “Stand your gate. You know the drill. Move before you’re told, you forfeit your privilege.”

“Who?”

“Says he’s your father.”

Eddie barked a laugh. “Right. My father’s—”

He’d been about to say dead—before memory stopped him: The old man stooped over a plastic visitor’s chair, humiliated and embarrassed, talking about death. Cancer. Eating him from the asshole out. Sitting there, too selfish to beg sympathy, too full of pride to realize that’s what he was doing. Looking into that bulldog face, Eddie had experienced an overwhelming urge to embrace his father, to let go all of the history and hate between them. Because for the first time his father was here, reaching out to his only son.

Then the flash of judgment in those rummy eyes, the same smug look on the old man’s face that had chased Eddie out of childhood. And bitter realization. His father hadn’t come to make peace. He was making a point. Like a miser arranging bundles of cash in the bottom of his coffin. Preparation. Telling Eddie death didn’t change anything. I own you.

Eddie felt the hurt, fresh. Which made zero sense. The old man was five years dead and gone. Cancer had done a bang-up job. Turned his body into a busted stack pipe that kept leaking until the guy in the unit below complained about raw sewage dripping from his ceiling.

So, anyone care to explain how the old man could be waiting to talk with him?

Slowly, Eddie swiveled back to the mirror. The face—stripped of its hardest time and wounds—was his. Only years younger. And Eddie knew he hadn’t been remembering events. He’d been reliving them.

Growing backwards.

“C’mon, Keane,” the guard pressed. “Enough preening. Let’s go.”

Eddie wanted to scream in protest. He could already hear the old man’s voice, the leathery gloat roughing its way past Redman chaw.

“See you got yourself branded. Didn’t take long.”

“Thought you of all people would understand.”

“I understand fine, boyo. Skinheads made you their punch.”

“I’m nobody’s—”

“You’re everybody’s punch, Eddie. Always been, always be.”

Eddie shook his head against his father’s words. Told himself that if he refused to leave his cell, his father would stay a memory, stay dead. The face in the mirror told him different. Against his own volition, Eddie let the guard take him—to what?

His past.

The dark cord of memory dragged Eddie toward its umbilicus. Time warped as his life played out in reverse. Days and weeks compressed into emotions, tight fistfuls of grief and rage that pummeled Eddie with savage intensity. Single events stretched out in slow-second madness, suspending him in acts of cruelty and degradation.