The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn Page A

passed. Then six months. And how do you call a son to whom you haven’t spoken in six months and say ‘Queen to b4’?
    He picks up his dusty black queen and moves it to the new square and looks at it. He sips his coffee. Problem is if Jeffrey doesn’t know about it the move hasn’t been made. Ian puts the queen back and pushes the board aside. Maybe he’ll call Jeffrey later today.
    He salts and peppers a soft-boiled egg and shoves it whole into his mouth. He chews slowly and washes it down with a swig of coffee.
    Strange how the longer you wait to do something the harder it is to do it. You push a task forward rather than pick it up, knowing you can take care of it later, always later, but as it rolls it gathers mass, like a snowball, and what you could once have picked up with one hand and put into your pocket now has to it the weight of planets.
    Ian burps and salts his second egg.
     
     
     
    He steps onto the elevator.
    His apartment building was constructed as a hotel in 1924 by Carl Dodd. For some reason known only to him he thought Bulls Mouth was going to grow into the major metropolis between Houston and San Antonio. But it never happened. He died and left the place, as well as Dodd Dairy, to his children Carney and Vicki, who turned around and sold the hotel to a Houston realtor in 1996. The realtor converted the hotel into apartments for college kids who wanted out from under daddy’s thumb, but the conversion consisted of little more than knocking down the old sign and putting up a new one. Certainly a repairman hasn’t so much as glanced at the elevator in twenty years or more. Every day Ian steps into it he’s certain that today will be the day the cables finally snap.
    The doors creak shut and Ian presses a button. The elevator shakes violently, as if the mere thought of movement frightens it, and then begins its descent.
    The doors open on the ground floor.
    Ian glances at his watch. He has twenty minutes to get to work.
    Maggie hardly slept all night. Her thoughts kept turning to escape. Even counting did not help. She kept losing track and having to start over. She tossed and turned and found herself tangled in her sheets. She could not get comfortable and her brain could not find peace.
    Now morning is here and she is standing beneath the basement’s sole window, on tippy-toe so that she can put her face into a bright beam of morning sunlight. The heat feels good on her skin. She wants to be out there again. She wants once more to feel fallen leaves and soil beneath her feet. To hear birds sing. To hear the still air come to life as a gust of hot summer wind forces itself through the leaves of the trees.
    ‘He might kill you if you try to escape again.’
    She glances to the left.
    A horse’s head poking from the dark shadows, flaring nostrils, a single black eye glistening in the small gray light reaching him from the window while the other is hidden in darkness, the toes of a pair of Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. That is all she can see of Borden. The rest of him in darkness.
    ‘I think he’s killed others.’
    His mouth does not move when he speaks. The words seem to simply float from his mind, scatter on the air, and reform in hers.
    ‘I think so too,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay.’
    ‘Don’t you remember what he did yesterday?’
    ‘I remember.’ She touches the scab bracelets on her wrists.
    ‘Then how can you think what you’re thinking?’
    She does not respond. She looks back toward the window and lets the light fall upon her face once more.
    ‘It will be worse next time.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Even if he doesn’t kill you it will be worse.’
    She nods silently. And now he has made her picture it in her mind. Hanging from the punishment hook, her hands purple and numb, her wrists bleeding, the rest of her body helpless, defenseless as she swings. She has been there before, at least two dozen times, and it is always terrible.
    She can kick. Kicking keeps Henry away,