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Lights out, but it was never quiet here. From every cell in the remand block came the moans and fretful sleep talking that every new prisoner made in his sleep. These were the men still haunted by their crimes, young men not yet hardened by trial, justification or time. If anyone slept, it didn’t last long and it wasn’t restful. Every moment of sleep was tortured by dreams of what they had done.
Mark was no exception. His pillow was covered with sweat and his blanket had long ago fallen to the floor from his flailing limbs. He murmured, tossed and turned, and at times nearly cried.
In his dreams, he was on the floor of the petrol station, feeling the blood and the soul seep from his body, lying in a pool of his life. He knew, unlike the kid at the petrol station, that the second shot was coming. He lay there in agony waiting for it, inviting it if only to finish the torment and the pain. But it never came. Once or twice it came close, with a blurry figure above him pointing a shotgun muzzle to his head, but he always awoke before the shot. Then he would go to sleep again, and the same thing would happen. And again, and again. It was driving him insane.
In the morning his mother was coming to visit him, and when he awoke for what seemed like the fiftieth time and was at last greeted by daylight, he got off his bed and went over to the basin to throw cold water on his face. He knew he looked drawn out, but tried to improve it a little before his mother arrived. She was already so traumatised by what had happened, he didn’t want to make her feel worse by looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. In reality he hadn’t, but she didn’t need to know that. Plus, he needed her to be attentive today. He knew the lawyers weren’t going to do everything they could to find his father, whatever good that would do, so he would have to get the ball rolling himself. Anything to get out of here.
His mother burst into tears as soon as Mark entered the visiting room. As soon as he sat down he told her to be quiet, but she just kept crying and crying. Finally he said, “Mum, if you don’t stop, I’m going to go back to my room. This is impossible. Do you know how bad you’re making me feel?”
“Making you feel?” she sobbed. “How do you think I feel? My only boy in bloody prison, and it’s all my fault.”
“No it’s not, Mum, but you’ve got to calm down, please! I need to talk to you about this. You want me to get out of here, don’t you?” She nodded as she buried her face in her tissue. “I need to know who my father is.”
Immediately she stopped crying and her head snapped up and she glared at Mark. “What the hell for?”
“The lawyer reckons it might help my plea bargain. I don’t know how, tortured childhood or something, so I can use some sort of insanity defense.”
“Are you telling me you’re insane now?!” she shrieked.
“Shh, be quiet would ya? No I’m not, but it might help if we say that I have some sort of emotional problem, maybe coming from my Dad.”
“What about your bloody anger problem? Did you tell that no good lawyer of yours how much of my furniture you’ve managed to wreck, how many walls you’ve shoved your fist through?”
“They already think I’m dangerous, Mum, so that’s not gonna bloody help, is it?” She whimpered some more. “Listen, just give me a name, alright. Give the lawyers something to start on to find him. Or do you know where he is and hasn’t told me?”
“He’s dead,” she answered flatly.
“What?!”
“Well, I don’t know for sure, do I? But that’s my guess, bastard like him, someone would have killed him by now …”
“What’s his name, Mum?” Mark pressed, and held onto her arm tightly.
“Ow! Mark, that hurts, don’t do that!”
“I’m sorry, I …” he took his hand off her, “I just need to get something from you, please.”
She sniffed again and looked down at her hands for a long time until she could finally look him in the eye, composed. “Donald. Donald bloody Collins, alright? They probably won’t find him though, and he’d be no use to you if they did.”
“Tell me about him, Mum. Anything.”
“Why should I? We’ve gone alright this long without him, what good is he to us now?”
“No we haven’t gone alright without him or I wouldn’t be here for robbing a bloody petrol station for rent money, would I?”
“Or killing someone,” she added softly, then burst out crying again. Mark couldn’t stand it. He lowered his head and could feel his teeth grinding against his will. She was no good to him like this, so he stood to go back to his room. “No wait,” she said, and tried to compose herself again, “what do you want to know?”
“Well, just basic stuff for starters. What did he do, did he beat us, why did he leave, that sort of stuff.”
“Oh god, Mark, it’s the same as every second man at the time. Of course he hit us, he had no interest in us at all and saw us as an annoyance. He left because he wanted to. I’m glad he did.”
“Alright, okay, look, I can see this is hard for you to talk about with me. I want you to go and see my lawyer and tell them, give them anything so that the bastards will pull their finger out and start working for us. Give them his name, description, tax file number, anything you’ve got, okay?” She didn’t answer him. “Okay?! I need you to do this.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Good, thank you.”
“Yeah, whatever. When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know, Mum, I really don’t know.”
It was a question he had asked himself every day since he had gotten here.
© Cynthia M. Piromalli 2003
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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