See what I mean? How the hell am I supposed to cheer someone up when the only fucking game we could reasonably play on the floor of a cell with no drawing implements is tic-tac-toe? I tried coming up with some better games we could play. Finger games or something. Nothing. Well, not nothing, but they were all worse than stupid tic-tac-toe. Guess how many fingers I’m holding up? Guess which hand the thing is in? Awful. Not even games really. There was only one bed in the cell, at that. And it was just a vinyl-covered, semi-padded bench. I spent a while thinking of things we could do with that, but they were all sex and, again, the mood was poor to say the least.
To be fair, my efforts were helped none at all by Marine’s insistence on being such a sad sack about the entire thing. Sad sack, it’s worth mentioning, was a comic book character. Is? Still? The comics weren’t wiped from history or anything. One of those super old ones, too. We have a weird surfeit of insulting names for people that came from old timey comic strips. Sad Sack, Milquetoast. There’s probably some other ones. It was supposed to be a longer list. Even then, somebody is probably looking up Sad Sack and getting indignant that the name comes from a military phrase. Yeah, I looked it up too, asshole. Nice try.
Getting back on track, we mostly sat around in the cell. I had slept in the butt room, so I figured it was well past the evening. I think Marine managed to sleep a little. She laid on the little bed thing, anyway. There was a shift change that I watched happen. I doubt I’d have noticed the guards switch if I hadn’t been awake. Honestly, it really didn’t matter. The new guy looked over at us once while he was being told we were here and then just sat at the computer the entire time. How the fuck do you get a job that cushy? It makes no sense. The shit I have to do for cash, and this idiot just sits in a room that’s empty most of the time and looks at off-track betting sites.
It must have been morning when they shifted over the second time. That was my guess anyway. A few hours after the morning guard came in, there was a call. Things started getting pretty busy after that. The guard was in and out of the room every few minutes. A receptionist looking lady came in. Then a team of guys in suits. Either they were getting ready to transport us or there was going to be a fun little visitor soon. Someone important no doubt. About an hour after the checks, the phone rang which sent the guard jogging down the hallway. I nudged Marine, who was laying on the bed-plank but wasn’t sleeping.
“Someone’s coming.”
“Who?” She sat up on the plank.
I shook my head. “No clue. It’s been all mumbling and well-dressed idiots coming in for a while now. Any idea who runs the place?”
“More than an idea.” There was anger in her voice. Plain anger.
Before she could say anything actually useful, there was the sound of mumbling and footsteps in the hallway. Metal carried sound pretty well. The footsteps stopped abruptly and a single sentence rang into our cell.
“I don’t care. I’m going in alone, understood?”
The voice belonged to a guy in his forties maybe. It’s hard to place that decade range in there. Maybe late thirties. A single set of footsteps continued down the hall and a guy in a suit came in. Expensive suit? No clue. How can you tell, really? Isn’t it just a label thing? I bought a really nice t-shirt once. Like fifty bucks. It was just really thin. I guess sort of soft, but I can get those for fifteen dollars, you know? Robots make all that shit. What are the overheads anymore? Does it really save money to have the robot make a slightly rougher shirt? Does cotton even work that way? It occurred to me that my knowledge of textile manufacturing would not be a strong point if I were ever on a game show and the category came up.
“Marine. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
The guy had a real smarm about him. You ever wish you could slap someone with something other than your hand? Like a really hairy guy’s sweaty back. The area just between the shoulder blade and the armpit. That’s the sort of thing that’d just be really satisfying to bring into contact with where this guy breathed from. He looked like if Pugsley Addams had a really skinny body but didn’t quite figure out how to get rid of the neck fat or the special ed haircut.
Marine stood up. “Jericho.”
“Ha!”
Marine whispered, her voice serious. “Laze, don’t.”
“I know what you’re here for. You’re never going to see it.”
She started to speak. “You—”
“Tut, tut. Don’t speak out of turn now. You see, I’ve decided that this is a good—”
“Hey!” I was done.
“—oppor—”
“Hey. Hey. Kale Salad.”
“—tunity—”
“That’s you. Kale Salad. I know you hear me you turkey necked piece of shit.”
“What?!” He finally looked at me, shrieking the question. His voice cracked a little bit and he immediately straightened because he heard it and he knows I know. Oh, I know alright.
“If you came down here to monologue like a fucking cartoon villain, fuck off.”
“Is that your way of protecting it, Charles?”
“Oh! Oh, spooky! Oh!” I looked at Marine, feigning terror. “How does he know my name? Oh whoa! This is more than I—” I whipped back around. “You’re a fucking joke. You have a stupid joke name, no one in here is scared of you, and we’re going to get Marine’s shit back and I’m going to piss in your desk. All that is going to happen.”
He bit the inside of
