Broken by Travis Thrasher

and I finally
     began to simply say “okay,” and I moved on.
    I guess that baptism was supposed to mean something, but if you don’t have the faith and the belief, then it’s nothing more
     than warm bathwater being poured over your head and that’s that.
    B y the seventh or eighth blow, it’s no longer any fun. There’s no more information to get because the guy doesn’t have any
     to give. He’s pathetic. He’s wailing with his nose gushing and spit slobbering all over his shirt and chest and hands, and
     he’s just a complete mess. James has seen many men resort to becoming blubbering mushes after the pain sets into something
     worse. A fear of more. A fear that perhaps this is it.
    “Just shut up for a minute already,” James tells him.
    He hands the young guy a towel. His name is Kyle Ewing. He works with Laila and has been trying to get her to go out with
     him for some time, and it’s only been a few days since she said yes. She’s in trouble, and she wanted company. That’s it.
     That’s all Kyle said and by now James believes him. The guy is confused and bewildered and blabbers nothing at all, and James
     tells him he’s not going to kill him.
    “Please, look, I don’t know what else to say, and I didn’t do anything wrong—”
    “I know, I know, just shut it for a second.” James curses. “Laila owes me something, and this is a nice little way to remind
     her. I just want you to remember something—you have nothing to do with any of this, you got that?”
    The beauty of the country is that a nice twenty-minute drive can bring complete and utter seclusion. Enough to where a man
     can get a kid held by gunpoint on his knees at the edge of a dirt road, and then he can pummel that kid into telling him whatever.
    “I’m going to take you back to our little friend’s apartment, and I want you to send her a very specific message, you got
     that?”
    The guy nods, blood staining the towel he wipes his face with.
    “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” James says. “I don’t like hurting people.”
    The guy just looks at him. No clever lines, no bravery, no nothing.
    James likes that. It’s easier when they don’t decide to try and be brave.
    His cell phone rings, and James picks it up.
    “Right on course. Now leave me alone.”
    •   •   •
    The soccer ball looks ordinary, scuffed, still solid enough to be used for a game.
    But as Laila looks at it, a wave of terror fills her.
    It was right next to her on the bed when she awoke a few moments ago.
    More than anything, the terror she feels comes from confusion. She doesn’t get it and wonders whether she’s supposed to. If
     the ball is supposed to be a message, a threat, she doesn’t understand what he’s trying to communicate. Was he that lacking
     in creativity and simply wanted to show that he had slipped inside her apartment last night?
    The thought of James standing at her bedside watching her in the darkness makes her skin prickle.
    Laila continues to wonder if someone is still there. She searched every place in her apartment that somebody might be hiding,
     but still she has doubts.
    She hates having any kind of doubt.
    And the ball isn’t about to provide any answers.
    Even though there’s nothing scary about it, she can’t help shivering as she touches it. She wants to make sure it’s real.
    Her buzzer sounds, causing her to jump slightly. Laila goes to the monitor.
    “Hello?” she calls in.
    But the buzzer just keeps going off.
    She walks out on her deck and looks over the railing. She calls out to see who is there.
    “It’s me. Let me in.”
    She sees Kyle.
    She doesn’t ring him in. Instead she bolts down the stairs andopens the door and rushes to see it up close. She curses and asks him what happened.
    “Just let me in, okay.”
    “Who did this?”
    “I think you know who did this. Let’s get off the street.”
    “Are you hurt?”
    “Yeah, I’m hurt. But I’m not gonna die or anything. Let’s just