The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn Page B

but only temporarily, and when she stops kicking, as she has to eventually, Henry’s punishment is even worse than it would have been. The mere thought of the punishment hook has kept her obedient on many occasions when every part of her down to the last cell cried out for rebellion against the horrors of the Nightmare World.
    ‘I know,’ she says again.
    But with the morning light falling upon her face she does not care. She does care, she is terrified, but even caring and being terrified she believes it will be worth the risk. She cannot stay here any longer. Not after yesterday. It’s worth the risk.
    ‘Even if he kills you?’
    ‘Even then.’
    ‘But what about me?’
    ‘You can come.’
    ‘I can’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I can never leave. This is my home.’
    ‘It doesn’t have to be.’
    ‘This is where I was born. I can’t live out there.’
    ‘You can try.’
    ‘I know better. I can never leave.’
    ‘Why?’
    Only silence in response.
    ‘Borden?’
    More silence. Then: ‘If you try to leave, I’ll tell.’
    ‘You can’t.’
    ‘If you leave . . .’
    ‘If I leave, what?’
    ‘You can’t leave.’
    ‘You can’t tell.’
    ‘I can never leave and you can never leave.’
    ‘You can’t tell!’
    He steps back into the shadows.
    ‘Borden?’
    He does not respond. She closes her eyes imagining herself swinging from the punishment hook, imagining blood running down her arms from her bloody wrists, imagining the terrible pain in her shoulders and hands, imagining the blows she will receive.
    She opens her eyes and looks to the shadows. They are dense as cloth and she cannot see through them. Anything could be in that darkness.
    You can never leave.
    Diego Peña hates the sun: it’s mocking him up there above the trees, shining its white light into his eyes and cooking his throbbing brain as he drives east along Flatland Avenue. If he could draw his service weapon and shoot the thing down he thinks he might actually do it. Watch it drop like a dead bird and go out like a candle.
    He burps, almost vomits, and swallows it back.
    He doesn’t know how many drinks he had last night at Roberta’s but it was at least half a dozen too many. He should just stop going there and make O’Connell’s his regular place. He’s incapable of regulating himself at Roberta’s.
    Ever since he answered a domestic disturbance call and took a roll of barbed wire to the face from her ex-husband Jimmy Block, Roberta has given him free drinks. Ever since she got the bar in the divorce settlement six months later and changed the name from Jimmy’s to Roberta’s, anyway, though some few partisans refused to go along with the name change and even now call it Jimmy’s. Diego burps again and swallows back what comes up. He shouldn’t have eaten the leftover rabo de toro for breakfast. But he’d thought his time kneeling before the toilet was finished. He thought a little food might soak up what alcohol was left in him.
    If the look on Cordelia’s face this morning was any indication, his wife thinks over four years of free drinks has been enough. Of course he was hunched over the toilet at the time, and when he looked up with spittle on his chin she turned and walked away, so maybe he misread her expression in that brief moment before her back was to him and she was saying, ‘. . . hace lo que le sale de los cojones .’
    What he needs is a red rooster: light beer, tomato juice, hot sauce, a splash of clam juice, and one raw egg. That would do him well. He glances at his watch. Seven thirty. Roberta’s morning bartender won’t even be in for another two and a half hours. He’ll have to suffer this.
    He guesses he’s on duty then.
    Kind of.
    Pastor Warden came into Roberta’s last night around eight thirty, just as the place was coming to life, and announced he’d pay ten dollars a head for each dachshund returned.
    ‘Dead or alive?’ Andy Paulson said from his stool at the bar, glancing over his shoulder,