Three weeks later:
"Is that a hickey?" Rachel Renton/Schillinger asks, suddenly--sharp blue gaze going straight to yet *another* discolored patch (barely) hidden beneath the curve of her ex-husband's jawline. Prompting Vern to blush, briefly but thoroughly. And answer, automatically:
     "Uh--no. 'Course not."
     She gives him the eye--slant, narrowed, skeptical. As Vern thinks, impatient: Well, what are you, Rachel? Jealous?
     ('Cause, baby...you *should* be.)
     Gettin' more ass than a toilet seat, these days, in actual fact--and from the one guy he'd thought would gargle glass rather than ever put out for him again: Tobias Beecher, Rachel's unwitting doppleganger (and THERE's a good German word; Grossvater would be proud).
     Well...maybe not. Given the context.
     (Anyways--)
     Yeah, that *is* a hickey. The inevitable result of hot 'n' heavy action going on here, there and everywhere, no holds barred and no access denied. With Beecher back in line, come finally to heel, spreading on (or even before) command--continually inventive and enthusiastic, in ways neither of them would've ever considered possible, before the post-Keller era. Which makes Vern guess his former prag must've really taught ol' Toby-baby a whole WHACK of new tricks, one way or another.
     (So put *that* in your Dad's hash-pipe and smoke it. Cupcake.)
     He stares at her through the visiting room booth's window, ticking the few remaining stages of their visit off like stops on some all-too-familiar travel schedule: An established routine, just like every other time.
     She asks him to sign the power of attorney forms; he refuses.
     They exchange vague pleasantries, try to rile each other up--more out of habit than anything else. Sometimes succeed. Sometimes fail.
     And then...she leaves. While he...
     ...doesn't.
     "Why DO you keep coming here, Rachel?" He asks. Just to see how she'll react.
     Rachel sighs. "You know."
     "Yeah, well--aside from that."
     She looks at him again, long and hard, in silence. Then replies--carefully--
     "To see, I guess. To--remind myself."
     (Of what?)
     But she doesn't elaborate, and the silence stretches tight, uncomfortable: An invisible snare, a fishnet tangle. A trip-wire, rigged to blow at any sudden movement. A garotte.
     Until: Lightly, softly...almost without looking, the gesture something she neither condones nor acknowledges...
     ...Rachel lays her hand on the partition between them. Pauses. Waits.
     (Just to see how *he*'ll react.)
     Vern stares at her soft, splayed fingers, shimmering pale behind scratched glass. Remembers how it felt to hold them, once upon a time. How it felt--what seems an equally long time ago, now--to realize he would never hold them again.
     Feels his casted hand try to clench, under its stiff plaster shell, as he rejects--violently--the impulse to lay his own fingers atop that smooth, see-through surface: Rejects it utterly, before it cuts the living guts out of his hardcase image, and leaves him nothing but a hollow imitation of the man he needs, desperately *needs*, everyone around him to think he is.
     "Hope it was worth the trip," he says, shortly, standing. And turns his back on her.

But: Who the fuck do you think you're fooling, Vernon? Schillinger asks himself, later,  walking the long hallway back into Gen Pop. If you're so cool, and things are going so damn great, then how come you feel you gotta justify yourself at all--to Rachel, or anybody else?
     Still got the carpal tunnel to deal with, along with these more recent broken bones, and Nathan's upped his meds *again*--deliberately, he'd take a bet--so his mood swings are becoming truly spectacular, not to mention unpredictable. Forget just punching some mouthy jungle bunny in the mess hall; the other day, he actually almost got into it with C.O. Karl Metzger, of all people--Metzger, whose previous lack of involvement in Em City politics leaves him completely unimpressed by the P.R. value of Vern's recent "victory" over Beecher, and sees maintaining their mutual recruiting drive--distributing texts, tattooing and taking names, signing people up for friggin' *mailing lists*, for Christ's sweet sake--as far more important than the Aryan Brotherhood flexing its newly-rediscovered Oz-based muscle.
     "I mean, the Muslims keep *their* rep up without murdering somebody every five minutes," the big hack had pointed out, as they stood in the post office together--obsessed, as usual, with Karim Said and his bunch of buttoned-down prayer rug-biters: Still steaming over how that holier-than-everybody coon bent the whole damn riot to his will, and managed to end up being McManus's right-hand inmate liaison anyway, once the dust had finally cleared.
     Adding, after a moment: "Or *fucking* somebody."
     (Yeah, right. 'Cause that's what REALLY gets up your nose, isn't it, Karl?)
     Not exactly Aryan enough for Metzger, this whole prag concept. Behaviorially speaking.
     And Vern, feeling a scarily overblown surge of anger, had thought: Man, you're like the world's biggest eight-year-old sometimes. Need someone to run you down the facts of fuckin' LIFE, for once, before everything we've--
     (--*I*'ve--)
     --worked so hard to build goes up in flames, faster than a matchstick skiff in a lava flow.
     Clenching his free fist. Driving his nails into his palm. Anything to stop him telling Metzger off aloud, and calling down the shitstorm on *his* head for once--
     You think you're gonna turn the A.B. into a growing concern, Karl? Make us "legitimate"? Dress us up in suits, maybe, just like the Klan--yeah, *that*'d go over REAL well. 'Specially out in the yard or up on the quad, where everything comes down to a scowl and an eyefuck: Muscle and 'tude, a pose with its origins less in philosophy than in simple self-preservation.
     Let me explain a little something you seem to have skipped right on over, *officer*. We're not a cult, not a Cause--just another jailhouse gang, surrounded on all sides by people ready, willing and all-too-able to KILL us deader than Malcolm fuckin' X, 'less we happen to kill them first. Most of us never even made it through high school, dumb-ass--only place *we're* likely to turn up on TV is the six o'clock news, or maybe Jerry Springer.
     And sure, I'd die to protect my status in the Brotherhood, 'cause that's what keeps me where I am. Makes me *what* I am. But for the Brotherhood itself, like some kind of asshole zealot--cannon-fodder in the RaHoWa, a martyr in the fuckin' making? Once more into the breach, dear friends, and don't forget to Sieg Heil! loud and clear, just before the sniper on the gun turret blows your head off?
     I DON'T fuckin' think so.
     It drives Vern frankly nuts, this happy horsecrap Metzger seems determined to run both their lives by, and he can see the rift between them widening steadily because of it, day by day by day. How Metzger goes around him now, more often than not--dealing directly with Fritz Duchene, Em City's new neo-Nazi "mastermind" (and hand-picked by Vern for that same position, let's not forget), cutting Vern out of the consultation loop entirely. And how Duchene just smirks at the spectacle of his elders fighting over who gets to say what gets done where, and by whom--sublimely amused just to be the centre of attention, for once, without having enough brains to realize that if they're reduced to fighting over HIS loyalties, things must be *pretty fuckin' bad*.
     (Degenerate, drug-dealing little dipshit.)
     Enraged, insulted, increasingly convinced that Metzger sees him as both potentially embarassing and possibly obsolete, Vern spends his days preparing for all-out war with Muslims and gangstas alike, his nights body-surfing in his own hot sweat, wracked by uncontrollable waves of self-doubting dread. And whenever it all gets a little too much for him to bear alone, there's nothing left to do but grab Beecher by the hair, the shirt, whatever body part comes easiest to hand--grab him, throw him up against any readily-available surface and try to fuck his fears away, again and again and again...
     ...only to have them come back on him, usually, not that long afterward.
     (Full-force. And twice as hard.)
     Have to kick that big bastard something, pretty soon, Vern thinks. Throw him a bone. Give him something to chew on, besides my own private goddamn business.
     Not that Vern knows exactly what said "thing" might be, just yet. But it'll come to him.
     Meanwhile: Reaching the post office at last, where he starts to assemble the Em City mail-cart, Vern allows himself to muse a little on that aforementioned doppleganger vibe between his "wife" and his "dead" wife--oh-so-ridiculously obvious, every time Rachel hauls her cute little butt down here to see him. And all the more...troubling, because of it.
     The slightly scary way to two of them tend to blend and shift together in his mind, after lights out--Beecher's tongue in Rachel's mouth, her deep, clear eyes peering--similarly myopic--from his secretive, cat-flat face. Their sharp, satirical grins, always quirked just a bit more sidelong at Vern's expense. Their shared blur of blond hair. Their Goddamn, devious, over-educated *brains*.
     Even feel a little alike, inside, he now comes to realize--that same rush, that same slick heat. A little wetter, in Rachel's case, of course. But the same tension, overall, in both...the same taut, begrudgingly yielding give...
     *Stop it,* Vern warns himself, sternly. Feeling his cock give a tiny jump, pumping half-hard at the very idea.
     And HERE's something scary to kick around--
     (or not)
     --on much the same topic. Lately, just before the bell rings for morning count, Vern's found himself all too often enmeshed in a strange, recurrent dream: Lying with Beecher, languidly entwined, the ex-lawyer's lips pressed deep into the hollow of Vern's throat, sweet against his collarbone. Murmuring, sleepily, into him. Nuzzling. Breathing slow.
     So unlikely. So impossible. And yet so good, so somehow *right*--so NECESSARY. An aching want satisfied at last, in every fibre of his sleeping body--
     --until he wakes, thinking: But...
     ...that actually *happened*. Just...not with Beecher.
     (With Rachel.)
     Taking Beecher because he reminded Vern of Rachel, much as he never saw it at the time--and would have denied it, vehemently, had anyone known him well enough to point it out: Wanting her back, real or imitation--back under his control, to punish, to possess, to *own*. And then, even after finally recognizing the link...
     (Keller, edge-of-angry at Vern's willful refusal to take his unsolicited advice: You KNOW he's just jerkin' your chain, right?)
     Yeah, that's right, Chris: Jerkin' *my* chain. Not yours.
     (And that just kills you, doesn't it, baby? Worse than any beating ever could.)
     Even after recognizing the link...even after Keller's warnings, his own misgivings...walking right on back into the same two-way trap, informed but unconvinced. Self-confident to a fault.
     (Oh, DON'T tell me I'm this fuckin' simple.)
     But: We all are, Vernon. All of us.
     (And you more than most.)
     Still: Rachel's outside, Beecher's in--and this whole separation thing, with Vern in Gen Pop and Beecher back in Em City, allows Toby-baby a *far* longer leash than Vern ever allowed him before. Bitch has RESPONSIBILITIES, now, what with being on McManus's bullshit Council and all: He can dictate their meetings according to his busy social calendar, then take off again once Vern's been duly satisfied. So while Beecher's *with* Vern again, on paper, he's not actually WITH him--not living with him, sleeping with him, subject to his every close-quarter whim. Instead, he spends his nights back in his old pod...with Keller.
     Though not...*with* him.
     (Or so he claims.)
     Vern pauses, mid-sort and -stack, to let a fresh new tide of emotion wash over him: The meds hard at work again, unravelling his psyche one thread at a time--making him flush and burn, sending traitorous little sub-thoughts skittering out from under every mental rock. Like Metzger and Duchene, Duchene in particular--both of 'em always acting as though Vern trying to monitor Beecher's movements is somehow weird, suspect. Some over-the-top fag freakishness, unbecoming to a TRUE neo-Nazi warrior's dignity.
     (Aw, gimme a fuckin' break.)
     *What are you, jealous?* His own internal voice asks Rachel, mockingly. And then, turning the question around, as the echo fades and dies inside his skull: Well...
     (...ARE ya?)
     'Course not.
     Vern's always demanded monogamy from his conquests--and that, along with his policy of mainly breaking in obvious virgins like Beecher, is what's kept him AIDS-free even in the midst of Oz, still able to ride bareback after seven years plus on the prison floor. So--jealousy, hell: It's just *practical*. Just a good policy of--what?
     (*Property management*.)
     Keller was out of hospital a week after Vern and Beecher "made up", back in Beecher's pod that very evening. And while Vern pretty much believes Beecher when he says he still hates Keller far too much even to *talk* to him, if he doesn't have to--let alone climb up and do the nasty with him, under everybody's prying eyes--these suspicions, pharmaceutically irrational as they may seem, persist.
     You SURE you never gave it up for Keller, baby? Never let him into that pretty little ass you *know* is mine?
     (Hell, has my damn TRADEMARK on it.)
     And that voice in his skull, so sly, so smug: Bad idea to throw him in the deep end of the pool with Chris "Anything That Moves" Keller in the first place, then, huh, Vern-o? If the idea of them together makes you so bugfuck.
     Chris. And...Tobias. Toby.
     (Sweetpea)
     ...the two of them...
     (*together*)
     But: No. That's NOT gonna happen. Ever.
     (Not if they know what's good for them.)

And over in the Em City library, where "Poet" Jackson catches Beecher in the unexpected act of poring over an open law-book--pen in hand, pen-tip to paper--his weak eyes *thisclose* to the page, right hand jotting down tiny, unintelligible notes in a legalese shorthand he hasn't used since he was studying for the bar--
     "Yo, Miz Schillin-grrr," Poet begins, appearing over his shoulder. "You tell ol' Vern he been dissin' the brothaz long enough, know what I'm sayin'? Tell him we AIN'T gonna keep playin' nice with his sorry antique ass, Nazi hack or no Nazi fuckin' hack." Looming closer: "Got that, Beech Blanket Bingo?"
     Beecher, muffled: "You looking to lose that nose, Arnold?"
     Suddenly remembering what Beecher did to that Gen Pop hump, when he got a little too close for comfort--not to mention Mr Nameless/Faceless, when the poor slob got between him and Vern--Poet rears back, hastily. "Naw, man. Jes' tryin' to pass along the word."
     Eyes still on the page: "Fine. I'll make sure to tell him, next time we...make contact."
     "Cool. Hey, 'case we get down to it--shit blows up, y'all gonna be out there with the Aryans, or what?"
     "Or what."
     Brows raising: "Bitch, you tellin' me you ain't got yo' man's back?"
     At this, Beecher does look up--eyes flat and pale under the library's flickering lights. Unreadable as two blank, blue TV screens, tuned in tandem to a single signalless channel.
     "Oh, I somehow think Vern can look after himself without MY help," he says, sweetly. "Don't you?"
     Poet snorts. Commenting: "You some piece'a fuckin' work, a'ight."
     Beecher smiles. "Well. Guess that's probably why they call us 'Others'."
     And goes back to his notes, whistling.

>From the Em City quad's top deck, meanwhile, Ryan O'Reilly keeps half an eye on his brother Cyril, currently deep engrossed in a game of checkers with God's best friend, Bob Rebadow--poor, companionless crazy old fuck that he is, ever since the Mole got shanked during the mini-riot--and the other firmly on Christopher Keller, who's lounging over by the TV bank, deep in conversation with that dim-bulb Aryan wannabe Duchene. With Keller slung back in his seat, talking low, seductive vibe in *full* fuckin' effect, for all he's still sporting the bruises he got for trying to poach on Schillinger's (un)lawfully wedded territory.
     And Duchene wavering, arms crossed, eyes skittering. So *obviously* tempted by Keller's unsolicited career counsel, as channelled straight from Ryan's absent lips, that it's kinda pathetic to watch: Break away from Vern, make your own bones and get big-ass P-A-I-D-paid all at the same exact time, just by setting up the A.B. as competitors against the Mafia--and O'Reilly himself--for the reins of Kenny Wangler's discarded tits empire.
     If he thought about it for more than five minutes straight, Duchene might possibly twig to the deal's subtext--how it's not only WAY too good to be true, but way too risky to try without considerably more backup than a bunch of cut-rate cellblock stormtroopers can ever hope to provide. Might even figure out who *really* has the most to gain from setting the Brotherhood against Nappa and his pinochle-playing goons...same green-eyed Irish thug who already suspects, deep down in his gut, that Peter Schibetta's wily old godfather may not only know what really got Dino Ortolani turned into a crispy critter, but may have ALSO put two and two together on who fed Peter's Dad Nino the ground glass special.
     Luckily, though, Duchene's an idiot. And Keller--is the best liar Ryan's ever seen in action, basically. Aside from himself.
     As if on cue, Duchene gets up, drifts away, shooting Keller a guilty backwards glance--which Keller meets with that knowing smirk of his, all sly innuendo and false cameraderie: Oh *yeah*, baby; you 'n' me against the world, right?
     Riiiight.
     Guy's one slick motherfucker, for sure, Ryan thinks, with just a hint of genuine admiration. Almost be sad to see him go, time comes.
     (Almost.)
     But go Keller will, one way or another--maybe now, maybe later. A battlefield hook-up, and nothin' but: Useful in the short-term, to protect and nurture Ryan's long-term investments. Imminently expendable, whenever those investments start to bear fruit.
     And speaking of which...
     "Hey, bro," O'Reilly greets Beecher, who's hauling himself up the stairs one weak leg at a time, cane lodged under his arm. "Need some help with that?"
     Beecher shakes his head, red-faced and sweaty. "Thanks anyway."
     "No probs." Lower: "You look into that thing we talked about?"
     "Uh huh."
     Prompting: "...and?"
     Beecher pauses, leaning back against the deck's railing for a moment, working hard to school his unruly breath. "I'm gonna need to phone around," he tells Ryan. "Consult with a few of my--peers."
     (You know: People who've spent the last two years in a court-room, absorbing up-to-the-minute changes in rulings and precedent--rather than face-down on a prison cot, faking orgasm for somebody they'd rather give a fuckin' shotgun enema.)
     "The ones who'll still *take* my calls, that is," he adds.
     Ryan nods, absently. Eyes back on Rebadow, now that Keller seems to have disappeared--and Cyril, listening wide-eyed to the old man's murmured commentary: Probably gettin' a sneak preview of the Almighty's personal plans for everybody. Flipping back his long, blond hair and giggling like the child he is, completely blind to the way the predators ringed around him hang on his every move, practically *drooling*.
     Good thing you never got around to telling Beecher about Keller switching sides, after all, Ryan thinks. It'd just be one more distraction, and distraction *ain't* what Toby needs right now.
     Not if he's gonna keep it together long enough to keep on working his old black magic on Vern AND put together an appeal on Cyril's behalf, that is: The appeal that'll finally get Cyril--beloved millstone around Ryan's neck--out of Oz and off his big brother's back, for once and fuckin' all.
     (And that's *another* reason why Keller's gonna have to go the way of all flesh, in the long run. To make sure Ryan gets Beecher's full, undivided attention, for as long as it takes.)
     Not to mention--after, probably.
     (I mean, why not?)
     "You know, Beech," O'Reilly tells him, gaze never shifting, "you DO pull this off, I'm gonna owe you. Big time."
     "Just tell me when Operation Vern-baby starts to hit its stride, O'Reilly. That's all I ask."
     "Gettin' there, bro. Definitely gettin' there."

And: Yeah, sure, thinks Beecher, grimly. Like I've never heard *that* one before.
     Jump-cut back to earlier today, in Sister Peter Marie's office. Looking up to find her bird-thin little hand on his shoulder, her worried lips pursed slightly, obviously searching for just the right words to begin with. And knowing: Here it comes, now--the "caring" words of warning, of cold religious comfort. The *lecture*.
     The advice, good OR bad--equally useless, either way, from the lips of someone... however well-intentioned...who's never, frankly, been able to do one damn thing about ANYTHING that's happened to Beecher since he first arrived here in this shiny, happy, glass 'n' white plaster hell on earth.
     (Well, bring it on, Sister. Bring it fuckin' ON.)
     "I'm worried about you, Tobias," she says. Seeming to meant it.
     (Seeming.)
     Beecher, cool: "Yeah? What about?"
     "I think you know."
     (Well, *yes*. I somehow think I do.)
     But: Why am I being so pissy about this? It's Sister PETE. She means it; 'course she does. Always has.
     (Not that it's ever made much of a difference.)
     "I'm fine, Sister," Beecher says, suddenly tired beyond belief. "I was fine before. Now I'm just as fine."
     (Same kinda fine, actually. Exact same kinda fine.)
     Quietly: "I just remember how unhappy you were, Tobias. Before."
     "Do I LOOK unhappy?"
     "No." She pauses. "And...that's what frightens me."
     (Yeah, well...me too.)
     Checked by Dr Nathan, the last time he was in the infirmary--picking up his Tylenol 'scrip for the day--and seeing HER eyes narrow, too, tracing the path of bruises, bites, scratches over his torso, shoulders, nape. The visible legacy of his recent trysts with Vern, those outright duels for sexual domination fought hand-to-hand, with no mercy given and none asked, driven on by Vern's endless lust and Beecher's evil parody of "capitulation": Oh yes, oh please. Harder, faster, more, *worse*.
     "You want to tell me where you keep getting these?" Nathan asks. And Beecher, shrugging--
     "Just clumsy?"
     (I mean, I *am* the guy who broke all his limbs falling down in the GYM.)
     The depressing part isn't the sex, though, or the chores, or the small humiliations--most of which he's so familiar with, at this pint, he can defuse them long before they really have a chance to rankle. A brief return to drag only lasted a week, providing the interesting challenge of doing his first Em City Council meeting in full flame-on mode--but a quick burst of old-style corporate lawyer hauteur seemed to do the trick. Pretty soon, he was getting mad props for pushing McManus to reinstate movie nights: With REAL movies, mind you--something rated R, NC-17, Triple-X, for the *adults* they all indisputably are.
     (And Poet guffawing, throwing him his set in surprised admiration: Yo, way to GO, Beech-ah! Y'all come *correct* and no lie, baby!)
     Why, thank you, Arnold.
     A few days later, bored by Beecher's total lack of response, Vern'd finally snarled (right on schedule): "Go wash that crap off--you really do look like shit, you know that?"
     (Oh. Just noticed, huh?)
     Sure thing. *Sir.*
     No. The really depressing part--is how damn EASY all this has been to pull off, thus far. He'd never get away with it, if he was dealing with the "old" Vern--pre-meds, pre-hand, pre-reappearance of his mysterious, Jungle Fever-havin' wife. Or if he was the "old" Beecher...
     But: Vern's not. And *he*'s not.
     (Thank fuckin' Christ.)
     So don't think I'm victimizing myself again, Sister, he tells her, silently. Because I really *don't* feel like a victim anymore. I feel like...a whore.
     (Which is what I am.)
     Get hard on demand. Kiss on demand. Fuck, suck, come on demand.
     Must be--
     (aw, just say it, cupcake)
     --how Keller feels. All the time.
     (But I don't want to think too hard about THAT.)
     Snapping himself back into the here and now, with a palpable effort, Beecher tells O'Reilly: "I'm gonna go take a shower."
     "Yeah, great. See ya."
     Uh huh.
     And then he's downstairs, walking through the shower room door with his kit slung over his shoulder, towel-wrapped--shameless as Adebisi, these days; he could give a shit WHO wants to hoot and holler as he goes by. Not that many do.
     (Knowing full well who they'd be going up against, if they ever got dumb enough to make an actual play.)
     Opening the door, stepping through into a blast of steam--
     --to see only one other occupant, back turned, soaping himself leisurely. Those wide shoulders, narrow hips--the whole tapering T-shape of him, damnably familiar, a sharp shock straight to the dick. That dark hair, slicked back from a high, balding forehead. That hawk-like profile, yellow-purple with old bruising.
     (Speak...of the Devil.)

Keller, meanwhile, stands enfolded equally deep in a rush of hot water and painful memory: Sitting around on the yard at Lardner, trying desperately to ingratiate himself with Schillinger beyond the immediate effects of a blowjob or a quick fuck behind the equipment shed--crowding the older man just a bit too close, taking unsought liberties, leaning into his space and breathing his air, like just being *around* Vern was giving him some kind of sick thrill. Which, he guesses, it kind of did. Back then.
     (Dumb-ass that he was.)
     That conversation, once, about--what?--fuckin' ROCK music...
     Vern: "All sounds like somebody gettin' screwed with a jackhammer to me."
     Keller: "Even the Stones? Now, there's a *band*--"
     "White guy tryin' to sing like a nigger."
     "'Cept he's NOT."
     "Those lips? Wouldn't be too sure."
     Keller, smirking: "Yeah. Nice, huh?"
     "Look, you wanna just stop it with that?" Elaborating, as Keller mimicked a look of ridiculously over-elaborate "innocence": "That *flirting* shit. It's fuckin' embarassing."
     And glancing past him, deliberately dismissive--Keller automatically craning to follow the movement, like some dog, helplessly attuned to the silent lure of his master's voice.
     (Thinking: Oh, *man*. Chris, for Christ's sake. Don't you have ANY pride?)
     Apparently not.
     Not quite daring to say, though feeling it hover on the tip of his tongue--well, you ARE screwing me. And hearing Vern in his mind, the oh-so-predictable comeback:
     Uh huh. But it ain't like I'm gonna *marry* you.
     (A jail thing, you dumb cocksucker--that's all it ever was. 'Cause *I*'m not a fag, okay? Just take what I can get, wherever I can get it.)
     So go shit on somebody else's dick for a while, and leave me the fuck alone...'till I feel like telling you different.
     And: Why does this still hurt me? Keller thinks, itchily impatient with himself, Vern, the whole damn deal--so old now, SO over, it's not even funny. Why do I give even the *start* of a shit about this ancient fuckin' history, when I got MORE than enough other things to keep me occupied?
     O'Reilly's plans. His own revenge. Payback for beatings inflicted, debts demanded. For being thrown out with the bathwater, back when he was 17. For getting the crap kicked out of him, three weeks ago, just 'cause he actually DID what Vern told him to: Got close to Beecher. Made him--
     (love)
    "Uuuugh..." Keller groans, annoyed and aroused, in equal measure. Turns, scrubbing soap from his eyes. And opens them--
     --to find Beecher standing *right there*, across the shower-room. Staring back at him.

Impossible to ignore Keller entirely, as Beecher's already learned, to his cost. So thinking (hoping), instead: Maybe he'll blame me for siccing Vern on him. Maybe THAT'll make him leave me alone.
     But Keller's eyes don't move--and the chemistry between them's as intense as ever, damn it. Even under the shower's spray, Beecher can still feel the heat from Chris's skin as strongly as if it's been laid--moist, sleek, enveloping--directly on top of his own.
     A twitching spark, set to his genital fuse. A wet, helpless *jerk*.
     They look at each other--a long, measured stare. Keller settling back, insolently supple, dark eyes hooding over. Like: Heyyyy, baby. Something you want to SAY to me?
     Well...
     (...no.)
     And Beecher straightening, spine set. Looking away, deliberately. Going back to to what he was doing.

While Keller thinks, coloring slightly: Contrary BITCH. You already forget what happened, last time we got up this close together?
     (Came all over my leg, as *I* recall.)
     And the *look* on Beech's face, as he did it--anguished, transfixed. Contorted like the face of Christ crucified on Chris's own shoulder--the same one Beech gasped into, hard and fast and shuddering, just before he gave Chris the desperate nip that's taken longer to heal than all his Vern-inflicted wounds incurred since put together.
     (Oh, BABY.)
     So struggle all you want, Tobe. *Front* all you want, it makes you feel any better. 'Cause you and I know, you're just prolonging the inevitable.
     And take it from a well-known faker--what you're doin' with Vern? Three-dollar bill time, for sure. But what you did with ME...
     (Well.)
     Keller punches the shower off, struts over to pick up his own towel. Shoots Toby-baby a brief, carnal glance, tongue curling quickly over his lips, and admires the result: Is that sweat on your brow, sweet thing, or just spray? And down there, where you're making all that lather...that an *extra*-large bar you got down at the commissary this week, or are you just glad to see me?
     "Later," he murmurs. And cat-hips it away, back to his--
     (their)
     --pod.
     Where Toby *will* have to end up, eventually, whether he likes it or not.
     (And stay.)

A frustrated fifteen minutes later, Beecher exits the shower room, violently towel-dried hair still standing on end like a disarrayed wheat-field--only to find his way blocked by Vern, leaning over the end of his mail-cart and scowling up at Keller, now grinning down at both of them through the pod's main window. Demanding, of Beecher:
     "What the fuck was HE doin' in there?"
     Beecher raises a brow, unimpressed. Speculating:
     "Taking a shower, maybe?"
     (Just a guess.)
     But: Is that "he" you mean, Vernon? Or is that..."we"?
     Thinking, amused: Yeah, that's right--I was in there chokin' his weasel, Vern. Just like I do every time you can't keep your eyes on me, for one reason or another.
     (So suffer, me-fucker. *Suffer*.)
     Vern's scowl deepens. "You bein' smart, sweetpea?"
     "Not that I knew of. Sir."
     Schillinger gives him another, darker stare, then bends to rummage through parcels and packages, emerging with a letter. "This's for you."
     "Yeah? Who from?"
     Vern's features twist, his thought abruptly easy to read as piss on snow: Think I'm your fuckin' secretary, bitch?
     And then, hauling himself back on track, with a visible effort--holding it up, all deceptively benign silk rumble:
     "Well, let's see. What's your daughter's name, again?"
     "Bobbi. With one 'i'."
     "That'd be her, then." A nasty smile. "So. You wanna trade me for it?"
     "How? By doing stuff I was gonna do anyway?" Beecher smiles back, equally nasty. "Keep it."
     Genuinely offput: "What the HELL would I want to do that for?"
     "Gee, I don't know: 'Cause it amuses you? Keep it, read it--wipe your ass with it, for all I care." Leaning closer, in Vern's ear: "Or if that doesn't sound too much like fun, exactly...wait 'till I drop by, later on. And I'm sure we can figure something out."
     Vern's head whips around, with a growl--and just for a moment, Beecher thinks, giddily: Oh, NOW I've done it. Gone *too* far, gonna pay for sure.
     (Finally.)
     "Actually," Vern says, with care, "I was thinkin' you could get me something a little more--substantial. You bein' so BIG up here in Em City, all of a sudden."
     "Like?"
     "Said's psych file."
     (Oh, you fucking Nazi fuck.)
     Beecher pauses, a minute, to absorb it. With Vern watching, slyly sidelong, obviously pleased by his hesitation: Not so smart NOW, are ya?
     Suggesting: "'Course, I understand you might feel a little bad about screwing Sister Pete over like that...since I know you guys are *friends*, or whatever..."
     A wealth of contempt, there in that one word: "Friends". Like any white man--even a liberal, Catholic, ex-lawyer prag--could ever really think he was *friends* with some pseudo-Spic nun. 'Specially one dumb enough to ask for a posting in OZ.
     Think I won't do it, huh? Disobey a direct order...give you permission to beat me bad as you beat Keller, make you feel all *manly* again...
     (Well, think again. Cupcake.)
     And meeting Vern's eyes, his own gone once more ice-pale, ice-cool. Replying, easily:
     "Hey--I'm not sucking HER dick."

A day or so later, meanwhile, as Sister Pete leaves Beecher once more alone in her office--as Beecher waits until her footsteps fade, then crosses to the filing cabinet, key in skillfull, traitorous hand--
     "I want you to keep an eye on Keller," Vern tells Duchene, in the post office. "Make sure he's not askin' for another--lesson, you get me?"
     Duchene, resentfully: "Why me?"
     "'Cause I SAY so?"
     "Well," Duchene mutters--still not *quite* fearless enough to raise his voice, right to Vern's face--"maybe I got better things to do..."
     Vern, gone abruptly rigid with repressed fury: "Like *what*?"
     "Like, uh--"
     (Selling drugs--*with* Keller.)
     Hey. WAIT just a sec...
     Duchene backpedals, regroups. Flashes Vern a goony grin, along with an okey-doke handsign--much to the other man's obvious amazement--
     "Got it covered, Big V."
     And Vern, thinking: The fuck? Dumb-ass friggin' freak...
     Then his attention's elsewhere--on Beecher, limping down the corridor towards him, something stiff and rectangular just peeking out from beneath the tail of his t-shirt.
     "Hey, baby," he calls. "You bring me somethin'?"
     ('Cause I got something for *you*, too. Just in case that thing on your ass ain't enough to warn--whoever--off.)
     And Duchene slips off to carve himself a fresh new slice of the pie, leaving behind a little present of his own--a home-made incendiary bomb, courtesy of Keller (or Ryan O'Reilly, really, not that *Duchene*'s to know). Meat, in motion, at long, long last.
     Grinning to himself. And thinking, with truly unholy satisfaction:
     See how ya like THAT, S-Man--you ever pull your nose out of Beecher's behind long enough to notice.
     Afterward, Vern passes the file to Metzger when the big hack swings by on patrol: Proof positive that Beecher's good for more than Vern's own gratification. And getting insultingly little in return--just a quick skim through the document, noting that Said seems to be under increasing stress about the possibility of his weak heart giving out under pressure. Something to keep in mind, for when the A.B. inevitably goes up against the Muslims in holy combat, as part of Metzger's vaguely-planned crusade for Oz-wide domination...
     (Yeah, *right*.)
     But Vern keeps his mouth shut, against his own better instincts--lets Metzger walk away, file in hand. Guy wants to fool himself into believing a little piece of paper can give him the upper hand over Em City's resident Islamic army, then fuck it--let him. VERN, at least, now knows what the real deal is (courtesy of Beecher, again, and his warning from Poet): Rumors of impending outright *war* comin' down hard and fast from every side, faithful and un- alike, these niggers following him with their evil juju eyes as he stalks on by--wailing their prayers to Mecca, or blaring rap from every orifice.
     As of tomorrow, Vern's breaking out the phone-book armor for once and for all; gonna get his soft gut covered, call a Brotherhood war council, and figure out a first strike that'll leave *both* enemy camps bleeding in the fuckin' dust--
     (--and what IS that he keeps smelling, damnit? Smells just like...)
     ...smoke.

An hour later, meanwhile--
     Sitting in state and sneaking a cig behind his usual screen on the (currently unoccupied) infirmary ward floor--effectively cleared, sixty minutes past, by the shrieking alarms announcing that Schillinger's private domain has just gone up in flames--Ryan O'Reilly turns his latest encounter with Tobias Beecher over in his mind: The blond man pulling him aside just as he and Cyril entered the Em City laundry room--that old, crazy look of his, so notably absent over the last little while, suddenly back with a vengeance--and whispering, fiercely:
     "I'm going to show you something--and if you laugh, I swear to Christ, I'll knee you right in the nuts."
     Pulling up his t-shirt, then, to reveal a fresh, infected-looking tattoo--bruisy red-black, already partially keloided: Two crossed lightning bolts, right above his left nipple.
      Ryan wincing, sympathetically. "Whoo, man. That's gotta hurt."
      "It *does*."
      "Vern pay for that?"
      A bright, forced smile. "No, strangely enough: Set me UP with it, like one of those makeovers. *I'm* the one gets to fork out though--'cause I'm *well off*."
     Adding: "But you DO actually *have* a plan, right, O'Reilly? I mean--just asking."
     "You know I do, Beech."
     "Oh, yeah, forgot. 'Gettin' there', right?"
     "Right."
     A hiss, through set teeth. "*Right*."
     Cyril glancing over at them, timidly, scared by his nice friend Toby's uncharacteristic vehemence. And Ryan, coloring slightly--his own voice dropping, to match Beech's--
     "Hey: Who was it said they were gonna keep it together, huh? Do whatever it takes, however long it takes?"
     Another flash of bared teeth. "Oh, don't feel you have to hurry on MY account, 'kay? Actually, I think you should take as long as humanly possible...so Vern has time to doodle all over the *rest* of my fuckin' body."
     "Beech, c'mon..."
     "No, YOU come on!" Pausing: "Look, I--just want to know there's gonna be an end to all this, someday. Someday--SOON."
     (Well--me too, Beech. Me fuckin' too.)
     Four months' worth of maneuvring, finally coming to fruition in this afternoon's post office fire--an open strike at Vern's most vulnerable areas, designed to make him even more paranoid than he already is, in all the wrong ways. Thinking the attack came from outside, not from in: Setting him up to punish the gangstas and Muslims for something they didn't even do, while simultaneously softening him up for the fallout from Duchene's betrayal. And then...
     Vern was pretty good P.R. for the Brotherhood, all told, back when he was on top of his game--but those days are FAR over, now. As even Metzger must be noticing.
     So: Find the right chum. Stir the waters. Let the shark smell blood--
     --then point him in the right direction. And *stand* *fuckin'* *back*.
     It's Ryan's dance, all right, in full, typical swing--a medley of all possible dances, half-arranged, half-improvised. Recognizing opportunity, knowing when to bait and switch. Finding out what to promise, and to who, to get them tapping their toes to YOUR tune...always keeping in mind, of course, that *promising* someone something--and actually *delivering* it--are two entirely different things.
     Keller's smart enough to know this; Metzger isn't. But then again, Keller's not thinking with his head, right now--not the BIG one, anyway.
     'Cause you're just too sexy for *everybody*'s shirt, ain'tcha, Chris? Ryan thinks, with a weird kind of affection. Been able to coast on by all your life, I bet, by makin' sure everyone around you wants to do the wild thing with your skinny ass.
     But the difference here is, see--*I* care more about fuckin' Vern over than I every would about fuckin' YOU. Even if I was interested.
     (Which I'm not.)
     Now, Beecher, on the other hand...
     After long study, Ryan finally thinks he understands what Beech has been doing: Guy *knows* he's an addict, that he's always gotta have some way to blow off steam, or he'll come unglued under pressure. And mindfucking Vern, that MUST be some kind of a high --but not enough, apparently, to keep Beech shrinkwrapped quite as tight as Ryan needs him to be.
     So, queasy as the idea continues to make him--Ryan's gonna have to push Keller and Beecher together, "fag shit" and all, for two (not so simple) reasons: To give Beech a *controllable* addiction, thus keeping him from falling off the wagon and taking Ryan's plans with him--by accidentally freeing Vern's addled mind up long enough that he MIGHT just notice how he's being played, before Ryan has everything in place for the final Operation Vern-baby showdown--and to make Vern so crazy jealous that Keller and Beech's affair will be like an unexploded mine Ryan can trigger anytime he wants, goading him into a confrontation which'll clear the field for Ryan (and Beech) to assume their rightful places at the top of the Em City pyramid.
     With Cyril avenged, and Beecher let loose to be the legally-trained force of nature Ryan always sort of suspected he could be, if he ever got--and KEPT--his crazy head straight. And Ryan pulling the strings from behind Beech's Others rep throne, the *real* man behind the fuckin' curtain in this Wonderful World of Oz.
     If Keller could keep from flaunting himself and Beech under Vern's nose, then none of this might work. I mean, who the hell WANTS to rush headlong into a situation that's bound to get 'em killed? Vern, insane with rage, pain, injured pride--a charging bull to Keller's human red flag, driven to attack Keller *directly* for once, in spite of the reinstated death penalty--
     And if Ryan can get Metzger to turn a blind eye, to let Keller and Duchene take care of the Aryan Brotherhood's biggest liability...
     ...well, it'll be Ryan's biggest score yet. Thing he'd be remembered for--if he was dumb enough to actually let anybody know HE was behind it.
     (Which he DID do--once. But only once.)
     And then under...very special circumstances.
     Ryan smirks to himself, scar crinkling. Takes another long drag, and blows a perfect smoke ring--
     --just as--too quickly for him to quite react--a shadow rears itself unexpectedly up behind the screen. Slips one cinnamon-colored hand between wall and panel, pulling Ryan's refuge apart with one strong twist, and reveals itself to be--
     --Dr Nathan--
     (*Gloria*)
     --herself. In all her remembered fineness.
     (In...the flesh.)
     Ryan freezes, a fresh lungfull of smoke just drawn, all poised for expulsion--but burning, instead, in his locked throat. Unable to move, to speak. All Blarney dried up on contact, an unkissed stone, beneath the sheer weight of her presence--her fathomless eyes, washing over him like some black sea he'd sell his soul to drown in.
     (Assuming he still had one.)
     Shocked silent. And hearing her say, into the empty space between them--
     "Ryan..."
     (Not O'Reilly. RYAN.)
     "Ryan," Gloria repeats--simply, softly. As though she'd never heard him confess to ordering her husband's murder...or called his love for her a curse she'd have to live with the rest of her life...
     "We...need to talk."
     (Oh...)
     ...*GOD*.
 
 

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part 8/2

One week later:
     No one else in the phone booth but that queen from the mini-riot, who gives Tobias Beecher a haughty glare; Beecher just shows him his cane, along with his famous teeth: Are these the choppers that circumcized a thousand morons?
     (You wanna be number thousand and one, RuPaul, go right on ahead and try. I *invite* you.)
     But Queenie's not *quite* interested enough to throw down on it, apparently. Just rolls his eyes, throws his tweezed brows high, and returns to his conversation: Later for YOU, girl/boyfriend.
     Beecher, meanwhile, picks up the receiver. Looks at it, a long moment. Then dials.
     A few moments later--after a few brief words with the chick on the prison switchboard--he hears the other end ring once, ring twice, then pick up. The voice that answers is brisk, professional--
     (--kind of the way HIS used to be. Once upon a time.)
     "Judge Grace Lima's office, Starline speaking."
     The operator, interceding, before he can speak: "Will Judge Lima accept a collect call from Tobias Beecher, at Oswald Maximum Security?"
     A pause.
     "I'll...ask her," the voice says, finally.
     Beecher smiles again, to himself this time--thinner, nastier. No teeth involved. Thinking:
     Yeah. I'll just bet you will.
     A click. And then--another. Breath in his ear.
     "Judge Lima?" He asks, tentatively. Into the silence.
     "Speaking."
     And there's that innately dismissive, edge-of-arrogant voice Beecher remembers so well from his trial--her diction utterly precise, vowels harsh and scratchy, like she's talking through a hair shirt.
     (Or wearing one.)
     The operator, breaking in: "I'm sorry, ma'am: Will you accept a collect call from--"
     "Obviously, yes; thank you."
     The prison switchboard disconnects, returning them both to breath and silence, as Beecher gathers himself.
     "Uh--" he begins.
     ("Your Honor")
     Not that he'll ever call her *that* again. If he can possibly help it.
     Then, with effort:
     "--*Judge*. I just wanted to say I'm, uh--sorry. For...calling you..."
     (...several times in quick succession, right to McManus's gratifyingly amazed face...)
     "...a cunt."
     (And THERE's a conversation-stopper.)
     Another--longer--pause ensues. As a jeering little voice in his head comments:
     Hey, idiot--how do you even know she heard about that? Didn't say it to her *face*.
     (Oh, shit...that's right.)
     A sharp drop in internal temperature follows; his stomach clenches against the sudden cold, newfound confidence peeling away like vinyl on a hot car's back seat.
     Well, Toby, you sure blew *this* one. Be lucky she doesn't sue you for defamation, let ALONE help you draft Cyril O'Reily's prospective appeal--
     (--and man, Ryan's gonna be some pissed, too. Which you do *not* want.)
     Besides which: Who were you fooling here, anyway? Aside from yourself? Playing LAWYER, like you're anything more than just a freak in a cage, just another trapped rat--anything more than every-fucking-body else here in hell's anteroom, aka Oz.
     He stands there, waiting, throat dry and pulsing. Feeling that fresh lightning-bolt tattoo on his chest--Vern Schillinger's most recent token of implicit ownership made flesh--beat and burn erratically, as though in ragged time with the overtaxed heart beneath it.
     Finally hearing, faint and tinny through the rising roar of blood in his ears:
     "Is there something I can *help* you with...Mr Beecher?"
     And, oh: How long has it been, exactly, since someone called him "mister"? Automatically, like it was just normal procedure? Or even--
    --like they--*meant* it?
     Well...
     "I...sure hope so," he says.
     And takes out the notes he made last week, in the library, on his...
     ...client's...
     ...case.

A few hours later, he's back in the mess hall for dinner, sliding neatly in right between the aforementioned Ryan and Cyril O'Reilly themselves--Cyril grinning his wide, silly innocent's grin, as usual. And Ryan...
     ...grinning too. Equally, goonily wide.
     (NOT as usual.)
     "Hey, Toby!" Cyril says.
     "Hey, Cyril."
     "They got bananas today."
     "Yeah? You mind getting one for me, sw--"
     (But: You weren't actually going to say--"sweetpea". Were you, Toby?)
     And Cyril, happily, not even noticing Beecher's hesitation: "'Kay." Bounding up and back towards the kitchen, leaving Beecher and his big brother to exchange a few sotto voce lines of far more serious discussion.
     O'Reilly: "How'd it go?"
     "With the Judge? VERY well."
     "Cool. So--I just keep on thinkin' happy thoughts?"
     Beecher shrugs. "Sure, why not?" Observing, slyly: "Though--you look pretty damn happy already, actually."
     (And what's all THAT about, when it's at home?)
     Ryan grins again. "Yeah," he agrees. "Guess I *am*."
     "Wanna fill me in?"
     The Irishman shakes his head. And replies, simply:
     "Wouldn't believe me if I told ya, bro."
     Ohhhhh--kay.
     'Cause this has been a nice, restful interlude, and all--but across the way, Beecher can already spot Schillinger's bull-thick silhouette, drifting in late at the very outskirts of the regular Aryan posse. The sight makes him snap to attention, back on point--and tell O'Reilly, deceptively bright and blithe:
     "Well. Back to the grind."
     He levers himself up, using his cane for support; brushes past Cyril, accepting the proffered banana with a grateful smile. And makes his way over to Vern, sultrily slow--hearing whispers multiply around him with every step, rippling up and down either side of the hall: The Em City Chorus, crossbred with their Gen Pop equivalent--twice the gossip in half the time, more effective than tom-toms playing deep in the jungle's heart of darkness.
     At a nearby table: "Poet" Jackson, to some unidentified, elaborately do-ragged fellow gangsta--
     "Yo, G, y'all seen Schillinger lately? S'like he's..."
     "PUSSY-whipped."
     "Got it in one, dog."
     And as Beecher passes, eyebrow quirked in his direction--throwing him back his *own set*, respectfully accurate--
     (Heyyyy, fellow Council-or! How they hangin'?)
     Poet shakes his head: Damn! And concludes:
     "'Cept--and ain't never thought I'm'a say this, yo--but *Beecher* ain't no PUSSY."
     And: Arnold, Beecher thinks, almost affectionate. Baby, you're making me *blush*.
     Returning his gaze to Vern, now, lashes lowered fake-submissively--and pausing, a moment, to register the fact that he does look kinda--
     --bad.
     (Not like *you* care.)
     HELL, no.
     But geez, Beecher finds himself thinking, with an unwilling little throb of--Christ, is that actually some version of...sympathy?
     (Get a fucking *grip*, Tobias.)
     --the old Nazi prick truly gives the impression, even at first sight, of a man who's spent the last week paddling hard up shit creek WITHOUT the benefit of a barbed wire canoe. He's lost weight, gained hair, like he's got so much on his mind he simply forgot to shave --his head, at least. Shirt-collar unbuttoned, stomach rendered puffy and stiff by the halved phone-book cutting into his gut. Even his tattoos look kind of--faded.
     In the wake of the post office fire--an event with which, Beecher would take fairly good odds, Ryan may well have been more than slightly involved--Vern's been left rudderless, bereft of both refuge and raison d'etre. Not to mention--given that most of the other Aryans now clutch around Duchene, leaving Vern effectively cut from the herd--reduced to the status of a hanger-on, a clinger, a lone primate shunned by his own.
     Like he's got leprosy, or something equally catching. Like he's a walking corpse, an autopsy waiting to happen.
     Fresh new plaster cast on his bad hand; broke the last one on a too-nosy Muslim, doing Chris Keller's old trick: Whomp, bam! And the rest of Muslims have followed him ever since, at a distance.
     Waiting.
     Just like the gangstas, who remember LeVon Jordaire and Kenny Wangler; the gays--not all of them too femme to fight, with a more-than-occasional razor-blade hidden behind those painted mouths--who remember Richie Hanlon. Em City's small Jewish population, integrated into several different gangs, who remember Alexander Vogel: Strung from his heels, dick flapping out, the word "Jew" scrawled across his slack, drained abdomen. And the Irish, who remember Cyril...even though, for Cyril himself, what Vern did to him has become nothing more than a vague, disturbing memory.
     Well. And: *Good*, Beecher thinks, viciously, smiling into his "master"'s faded eyes. Not that much longer to go, now, probably.
     (Thank God.)
     But let's take this all just a BIT further, shall we? While we're *here.*
     Feeling as GOOD as he does, after all, in the wake of his exchange with Judge Lima. So--on top of things.
     (Back in the saddle again, and all that.)
     Just like a real, live citizen again--someone with a job, a car, a wife, a life. A closet full of thousand-dollar suits. A pair of glasses. Someone who doesn't have to go through each successive day knowing he killed another person's daughter just because he was too fucking arrogant to call a cab in front of his peers, or suspecting that everybody he meets has already heard about that swastika burned into his ASS.
     (And whose fault is THAT, now, huh? *Huh*?)
     Well...
     ...mine, partially.
     (But fuck it.)
     "Got a little present for you," Beecher murmurs, leaning close. "Sir."
     Breathing it, close and hot--like an air-mimed kiss--into Vern's ear: A calculated gesture of obesiance, designed specifically to make Vern look weak for even receiving it, let alone acknowledging it--
     --and tucks the banana into Vern's "good" hand--before moving, deftly, on.

While Vern, left staring in his wake, thinks: Oh, what the *fuck*.
     Publicly humiliated, and not even sure what he has to feel humiliated ABOUT; laughter welling up on either side of him, a raucous tide of whoops and snorts--from too many sources to identify--forming a general wave of amusement over the sheer . He hears Duchene giggling, over by the Aryans' table; catches Keller's dark eyes as he wheels around to glare them down, glued to Beecher (as always), and sees him give that sneaky sidelong smirk.
     With Dr Nathan's daily meds cocktail rocking him just as bad as ever, back and forth and sideways--making him feel laid open, exposed. Like everybody around him can read his thoughts...read every secret thing, these endless spurts of lust and fear and rage, bubbling up through him like lava...
     Can't sleep 'till he exhausts himself, and when he DOES, the dreams are *choice*: Finding that note on the kitchen table, laying into that dealer with the tire iron. His precious boys, shaking and puking their way through withdrawal, cursing him the way he used to curse the Old Man--still does, actually. Rachel on her nigger. Beecher on Keller.
     Beecher on...anybody that little whore can get next to, probably. 'Cause Vern can't watch him ALL the time.
     (And how crazy is *that* tinfoil-hat-wearing type of logic, Vernon? Exactly?)
     ...pretty crazy.
     Can't sleep, can barely eat. The post office he's spent eight years plus building into his own little empire is a burnt-out hulk, doorway strung with yellow crime-scene tape, and they've got him back down in the furnace room now, slinging slag, like he was sixteen fucking years old again; screw THAT shit. Can't even make lists, let alone go through them--the items skitter around everywhere, altering on contact. A constant internal debate: Did this. *Didn't* do this. DID this--didn't I?
     Well, *didn't* I?
     I KNOW I fuckin' well did this, damnit. 'Least...
     (...I *think* I did...)
     As yet another voice keeps on yammering, inside Vern's head: And who has my BACK, goddamnit? Doesn't *anybody* in here have my fuckin' BACK?
     Apparently...not.
     'Specially since C.O. Karl Metzger, once Vern's guaranteed backup, now doesn't seem to feel obligated to do one single friggin' thing to stop these motherfuckers from making fun of him--just looks away, contemplating Mars. Embarassed by Vern's embarassment.
     (Like the useless, slack-jawed, cow-sized jizzball special he really is.)
     Well, piss on it. Vern came in here alone; he'll *leave* alone, one way or another, it comes to that--
     (--and it sure looks like it may.)
     But: Not until HE's *good and fuckin' ready*.
     "Somethin' you wanna SAY to me?" Vern demands of his former mouthpiece, voice rough with held-in tension--a grating shadow of his former roar. Unimpressive, even to himself.
     As assessment Duchene seems to agree with. Replying, all barely-muffled insolence:
     "Well--yeah. You gonna peel *that*--"
     --the banana, drooping--forgotten--between Vern's fingers--
     "--now? Or later?"
     (Ex*squeeze* me?)
     Tossing the banana aside, with a growl, Vern scrubs his "good" hand vigorously back over his skull, feeling his burning, sleep-deprived eyes--already wide--widen even further. The sandy ridge of his brows lift so high, it almost starts to merge with his...
     (...Jesus, is that a HAIRLINE?)
     Vern's lips twist at the thought, tightly. As he rumbles:
     "Think you maybe wanna shut the fuck up, Fritz..."
     Trying to get a bit of his patented old-style genial menace going--and failing, obviously. Because Duchene just snaps back, without even bothering to think twice about it:
     "Or what, *Vern*? Gonna get your WIFE over there to bite my dick off?"
     A fresh eruption of laughter. Vern flushes, turning his back on the other Aryans with as much unhurried dignity as he can muster--only to find Beecher back at his side, holding out a tray with some weird kind of flourish: THERE you go, cupcake. Service with a smile!
     (And that's just so very--*cute*.)
     Frowning in building pain, his bad hand already starting to throb, Vern takes the tray and stomps off to another table, nearby but unalligned; its present occupants scatter at his approach, clearing the way. Beecher sprawling out across from him as he sits down, cat-lithe--producing another banana from his pocket, where it's somehow remained uncrushed. Which he then begins, very deliberately--
     --to eat.
     Unhooding the tip. Licking it once, as though for luck. Slipping it between his lips...
     ...and biting down. With an audible *click*.
     (Ooogh.)
     Iron-hard, all in a second, under the table.And Beecher, toying with the banana's peel on its metal-sheathed top--able to tell at a glance, just by the way Vern shifts in his seat.
     (...freaky fuckin' SLUT.)
     "Enjoying your fries?" Beecher asks, idly. "I told 'em to put on extra gravy."
     (Just like you like it.)
     Vern hisses through his nose. "Look," he says, "why don't you just step off for a while, bitch? Go sit with the O'Reilly retard; see if he remembers any of that chess shit you been teaching him."
     In other words: Leave me the fuck ALONE, 'till I *want* you...for something.
     (And I think we both know what.)
     Oh, yeah. I think we *do*.
     But Beecher just shrugs, fluid, pushing himself to his feet again. And replies, in a sultry murmur:
     "Whatever you say..."
     (...sir.)
     Hand giving a culminative, wrenching STAB, under its cast, as Vern watches his "wife" push off towards the O'Reilly enclave: Crowd parting like clockwork to let him through, limp and all. The craziest cripple in Oz, his rep--and Vern's patronage, much as the Aryans may be contemplating revoking his Brotherhood membership--still a heinous enough combination to keep almost any fellow predator shy of that pretty blond ass.
     Because: He's *mine*, Vern thinks, grimly--almost as though reassuring himself. Mine now, mine forever; death do us part, and all that crap. I mean, who the hell else would WANT him? Aside from...
     (...Keller)
     But before he can pursue *that* thought much further--scan the hall for those dark eyes again, staring hyp-mo-tized at the hard-won human prize VERN now once more owns from the inside-out--Vern feels a tap on his shoulder. Looks up to see C.O. Diane Whittlesey, his favorite uncaught murderer, hovering above him: McManus's right-hand hump once upon a time, now busted back down to running his errands and carrying out his orders--just like everybody else.
     A pharmaceutically-induced jump-cut, the kind he's gradually getting more and more "used"--scarily so--to having. And then he's following her down the long, intricate series of halls leading...NOT to the visting room. To somewhere entirely different--somewhere he hasn't seen the inside of since, oh, it must be--
     (--when my sons came to visit.)
     The room reserved for contact visits, through whose door he can just glimpse the sole occupant: Rachel.
     Of course.
     (Some movie from the '60's, right? "If It's Monday, It Must Be My Dead Wife.")
     Whittlesey turns: "Gonna have to cuff you, Schillinger. It's--"
     "Procedure? Yeah. I know."
     She clicks them on, opens the door. Rachel looks up, scrubbing hair from her face. Has it down today, not in her normal crown of braids, but tied back by a brightly-colored, African-patterned scarf that matches her dress, like some blonde Mammy wannabe; he can barely bear to look at her. Honorary nigger drag.
     And her *smell*, rushing to meet him, setting him instantly all on edge...her warm and living presence, mere inches away, with no barrier between them...
     He can sense Whittlesey watching him, out of the corner of his eye--monitoring him for any sudden moves, attuned to the vibe. Her having had her OWN marriage problems, as he recalls.
     (Well, don't bust a rib, Lady Di. I'm not gonna jump across the damn table and beat the crap out of her, if that's what you're afraid of...)
     No. He's NOT.
     Rachel without preamble: "Mr McManus--thought this would be a good idea."
     Vern lowers himself into his seat, steepling his trapped fingers together. "And you--don't?"
     Mimicking her tone, deliberately. She flushes a bit, obviously realizing it.
     "Well," she replies, with care. "The *other* kind of visit didn't exactly seem to be going anywhere, did it?"
     (Guess not.)
     "Cory's still in juvie, just in case you're interested," she continues, not waiting for an answer. "But Jan's about to be released from hospital--which means I need custody of him, *now*. Or he goes right on home with the Old Man."
     "Wouldn't be so bad, maybe."
     Another, deeper flush. "Be serious, Vernon! Why are you fighting me so hard on this?"
     Because...
     (...it's the only way I have to keep you coming back?)
     That inner voice again, always a bit louder, a bit more insightful. Cutting just a bit deeper, and salting the wound.
     Self-protection, that's the key. Vern lets his hands twist tighter, ignoring the pain, and switches conversational gears with a slick speed he learned back when they were still together--arguing in whispers, behind closed doors, just out (hopefully) of the boys' earshot: The bad old days, when Rachel used to stick her cat-flat nose next to his and hiss, provocatively:
     *You wanna hit me now, Vern? In front of the kids? Oh, hit me in front of the kids, Vern, PLEASE. I double-dog *dare* you.*
     But: I never did, did I? Not...if I could possibly help it.
     (You contrary little cunt.)
     "Nigger drive you up, this time?" He asks, idly.
     "Just like always."
     "And how come he never comes in with you, he loves you that much?"
     "'Cause he knows you'd call him a *nigger*?"
     "Huh." Ironic: "Brave guy."
     Rachel, seeing the bait, just raises an eyebrow, and doesn't take it. A note of irony--and humor--creeping into her OWN voice, as she throws back:
     "Oh, he's got his resources." A pause. "Lives with *me*, right?"
     (Right.)
     She smiles at him, just a sidelong crook of the lips, and he has to forcibly restrain himself from smiling back. Every particle of him yearning to meet her halfway.
     Their eyes locking, briefly. Sliding together like long-lost puzzle pieces, pale blue on even paler--and sparking.
     (*Ugh*.)
     And oh, he can feel it in his gut, his hand. His groin. This all-over clench of recognition, at a level too basic to ever deny, too visceral to defend against: Flesh to flesh, man to wife.
     Her gaze softening under his, just for a second. Almost like--
     (--she...feels it too.)
     "You sign the papers, I go away," she reminds him. "C'mon, Vern. How hard can it be?"
     He swallows. Feels the phone-book cut into his gut, abdomen fluttering with tension. And replies, voice reedier than he'd like it:
     "You know every time you come down her--with *him*--word gets around. First guys on the wall, then it filters down--and pretty soon, every-fuckin'-body knows."
     With a distinct chill: "And this is supposed to affect me *how*?"
     "AFFECT, shit. I'm just tellin' you--you don't know what you're playing with, okay, Rachel?"
     He takes a ragged breath, thinking his next sentence over, trying to figure out some kind of loophole that'll allow him to preserve his game face intact. But there's no safe way to say this.
     Carefully: "Every time you come down here--with *him*--makes it ten times harder for me, understand? The Brotherhood..."
     Her nose wrinkles, automatic. "Oh, so what, I'm supposed to just park Paul at home,  in case I *offend* your Nazi pals with his presence?"
     "You know how it goes, woman. Lose your rep in here, you might as well--"
     "'--paste a FUCK ME sign to your own back'; yes, I *do* know. Ought to by now, considering I've heard it a thousand fucking times before--"
      (Oh, for the love of fuckin' CHRIST--)
      With a  barely-suppressed cry of frustration, Vern slams his elbow down HARD on the table, and feels the shock turn his whole shoulder numb. Demanding, as she jumps at the sound:
      "Look, you want me *DEAD*, Rachel? That really what you want?"
      Whittlesey very much on the alert now, a looming blue-clad presence at both their shoulders, one hand on her nightstick. But Rachel ignores her, eyes still on Vern's. And says, quiet:
      "...no."
      (I've never wanted that.)
      And, impulsively--just like that one brief moment, last time, when she pressed her palm to the glass--when he saw what she was doing, responded to it, but kept himself from matching it for fear of looking weak--
     --but in front of *who*, Vernon? The guys on either side, both firmly entranced by their own visitors?
     (Myself, maybe.)
     At any rate: Impulsively, without thinking it through--like so many other things they've done together, one way or another--
     --Rachel puts her hand on his. The "good", uncasted hand.
     Those soft fingertips, like a closed circuit: Five--deceptively mild--electric shocks.
     (Oh, Lord.)
     He feels his own fingers link with hers and pull abruptly upward, presses the hand caught between his chained palms to his face, crushes it passionately to his mouth, his teeth, his dry and yearning lips--
     (Oh...RACHEL)
     --and then, just as abruptly, they're--
     --*kissing*.
     (Uh, aghhhh...)
     With Rachel literally halfway up in his lap, a thigh on either side of his, breasts crushed against him. So incongruously soft and good-smelling. So UNLIKE Beecher...and so *like* him: Her dazed blue eyes, pupils dilated 'till they look almost black; her little moan of arousal into Vern's open mouth, thrumming on his tongue.
     (Ummm.)
     And he can swear to GOD feel her skin on his, sticky-hot even through two pairs of pants, crotch already sopping: That CHARGE between them, strong as ever--a four-alarm genital firestorm, proximity-triggered. Knowing damn well she can feel *him*, 'cause she'd have to be dead not to--
     (could drive fuckin' NAILS with this thing, probably, he wanted to try)
     And his bad hand pounding, heart contracting, as one breath moves between them, pumped back and forth, back and forth--shared, again and again, in great, windy gasps--
     From behind him, Whittlesey, finally amazed into action: "Hey, break it UP!"
     (Just like in the gym.)
     Showing her his teeth, automatic, as she pulls Rachel off him--and where'd he learn *that* move, exactly? Gee, I wonder--
     While Rachel just goes limp, unprotesting. As astounded by her own response--apparently--as either Vern *or* Whittlesey.
     "*Contact* visit, Schillinger," the female guard reminds him. "*Not* conjugal."
     (Yeah, fine. I GOT that part, actually.)
     But: Feeling heterosexually alive for the first time in years, all humming and sparking, and Rachel so close to him...come BACK to him again, after all this time...
     (Mine. Again.)
     He looks over at her, brim-full of strange affection. All those gentle things flowing back into him, parched earth suddenly irrigated--the things he hasn't felt since before--
     (--she left him.)
     Composing herself. Smoothing her skirt back down over her lap. And saying, after a moment:
     "Well. That..."
     (was AMAZING)
     "...was...a mistake."
     Adding, as Vern goes rigid again--the words like a slap across the face, a callous thrust straight to his reawakened heart--
     "And I apologize for it, Vern. I really do."
     (Like that's supposed to help, somehow.)
     The voice, now, back and jeering: 'Cause you're just such a *stud*, Vernon. Just couldn't...help myself.
     Yeah, well.
     (Never can, can you?)
     About anything.
     This commotion below the belt making him vicious, even by usual standards. And so--forcing his voice down into its most soothingly contemptuous register--Vern rumbles:
     "Oh, don't worry 'bout it, Rachel. You wanted to hurt me, right? And you got what you wanted." Continuing, as she reacts: "Hurt me, hurt the kids--"
     Snapping, her composure cracking on contact: "I would *never* hurt the boys, and you damn well know it."
     "DID, though. Didn't you?"
      "Hey, *I*'m not the one got myself thrown in JAIL--"
      "You think I *wanted* that?"
      She snorts. "Oh, you LOVE doing time, Vernon, you always did, so don't even try. Way you used to talk about this place, you'd think it was Club fuckin' Med; *so* much easier than real life, when you get down to it, isn't it?" Leaning in now, harder, her own elbows on the table: "But do you love it so much you want to have Jan and Cory in here along with you, all up close and personal? Want to give them the guided tour?"
      "*Stop* it."
      "No, YOU stop it, just like you know you can--let them come home, instead. With me."
      "--with your NIGGER, you mean--"
      "Yeah, that's right, with him too! And why the fuck *not*?"
      And pausing, in the wake of her temper's flare, to gather herself. Before pleading, tone gone once more quiet:
     "Just let them have a *life*, Vern, that's all I ask. Let them--"
     (Let them--what?)
     Because she's stopped short, mid-sentence. Hesitating. Like she knows she's made some kind of...mistake.
     (But what kind?)
     Vern feels a cold worm probe his windpipe, repressing a shudder: Pain? A premonition? Or is that--could it be--
     --fear?
     "Let them do what, Rachel?" He asks, aloud. Throat narrowing further, in anticipation of her answer.
     Reluctant: "Let them...meet..."
     "Meet WHO?"
     "Meet..."
     ...her voice dimming further, folding in on itself, like she's afraid--or ashamed--even to shape the words...
     "...their sister."
     (Aw, *no*.)
     If only he was still holding her hand, now, he could drop it. Like a live coal, or a rotten piece of meat. Like love itself, that stupid fucking concept: A pressing deadweight of sting and misery, his soul's unhealed sore.
     So: That's why you ran away, huh, Rachel? Why you thought I was gonna *kill* you, 'stead of just dragging you back by your hair--not 'cause you were just *sleeping* with him, oh no: I mean, mighta put him in the critical ward over that, and made it pretty bad for you too, but I'd've still wanted you BACK. You being...
     (*mine*)
     But already--knocked up. By HIM.
     (The nigger.)
     "A daughter," he says, hearing it ring hollow. A tolled leaden bell.
     "Yes."
     "Be about, what? Seven, now?"
     "Just about, yes."
     "What's her name?"
     "Vern..."
     "What's her *name*, Rachel? C'mon, what the fuck can it do to tell me--"
      --with all the bile of a dream first offered, then destroyed--
     "--what you CALL this little mongrel bitch of yours?"
     Rachel looks down. And whispers:
     "...Jacoba."
     (And: Ohhhhh you fucking, *fucking*, FUCKING,  *FUCKING WHORE*.)
     A jolt of memory, admixed with lust, hate, cascading carpal tunnel pain, RAGE: Seeing the telegram confirming his older brother Karl Junior's MIA status clutched in her arthritic hand, the webby grey of her bent head. And the blurry print, swimming in front of both their eyes: "Dear [Mrs Jacoba Schillinger], we regret to inform..."
     His mother's name. The name they would've given--
     (*their* daughter)
     --if they'd ever had one.
     (Which...they never will.)
     Never. Never.
     (*Never*.)
     My HAND, he thinks, dazedly. Christ, I break it again, or what? Can't even feel my fingers.
     And says, aloud:
     "Gimme those papers."
     "What?"
     Looking up, then--looking her straight in the eye, for the very last time. And seeing all of her at once, the inaccessible whole: Past, present, future. That punk girl in the bar. His warrior mate. This traitor who made him just soft enough to hurt, but far too hard to bend--ever, under any circumstances--
     --without breaking.
     "The papers, Rachel," Vern says. Utterly cold. Utterly clear. "For custody. So I can *never see you again*."

And meanwhile, on the other side of the world--Em City's upper deck, as far removed from Vern Schillinger's private little marital meltdown as Siam is from Syracuse--
     "You told him about the shipment?"
     "You know it."
     "And he's into it."
     Chris Keller cocks a dark, Satanic brow in his co-conspirator's direction, smirking afresh down his hawklike nose. Replying:
     "O'Reilly, *baby*--have I ever let you down?"
     And: Not so far, Ryan O'Reilly thinks.
     (But not like I'm ever gonna give you the *chance* to, either.)
     Down on the quad floor, Fritz Duchene--their mutual dupe--stands deep in conversation with Karl Metzger, the other unwitting part of Ryan's Schillinger-plus-pressure-equals-revenge equation. He'll catch up to the big Nazi hack later, sometime when Keller's not around; no point in Chris knowing ALL the angles, after all. 'Specially when one or more of them might--no, make that probably *will*--get him killed. Sad, but true.
     (Well...true, anyway.)
     For now, however, Ryan has a date to keep with the aforementioned unbelievable source of his current happiness...deepest, darkest secret in a heart so jam-packed full of dark secrets, it probably wouldn't even show up under a cardial x-ray.
     "Later, " O'Reilly tells Keller, whose eyes have already slid from Duchene back to the shiny glass wall of his own pod: The place where Beecher isn't, as yet. But will be, soon enough--when the Oz workday's finally over, and they're both locked back in again.
     Together.
     (Hey, whatever floats your boat.)
     Just make your damn move, Mr Mac Daddy sex-machine, and SOON--so I can get everything *else* I need to happen up and moving, right on schedule.
     With that, Ryan strides off, whistling, bound for his own little adventure cruise: Fuck *travel brochures*, man! He's talking 'bout a round-trip ticket leaving right damn now to tour the most exotic, romantic ports of call imaginable, destination...*ecstasy*. Or as far as you can get, at least, working horizontally--
     --from that big, comfy desk in Dr Gloria Nathan's office.

And speaking of offices...
      Tobias Beecher looks up from his own desk, and the blinking monitor atop it, as Vern Schillinger appears in Sister Peter Marie's doorway: Huffing, sweaty, a *miasma* of concentrated misery exuding from every visible pore. Tearing at the collar of his shirt, far too impatient to actually get the thing loose before he simply RIPS  it open down the front, buttons spraying recklessly--dumping the gutted phone-book that spills from his abdominal region into the nearest wastepaper basket and rounding on Beecher, practically before the clang of its passage can register. Growling:
     "She gone?"
     Beecher: "For a whole half-hour."
     "'Kay."
     And then he's being jerked to his feet, thrust headlong through the door into Sister Pete's inner sanctum--the holiest of holies, of course, where Schillinger feels no doubt automatically *drawn* to piss.
     Thinking: Just as well, really--considering the LAST time he got fucked chez Sister Pete, it was back out there...by Keller.
     (But that'll just stay OUR little secret. Right, Chris?)
     Up against the wall, Vern kicking the door closed behind them and popping his own fly, while Beecher shucks a shoe and depants one leg (gone commando today, due to laundry problems; another inadvertant stroke of "luck"). Then lifted and entered, rough as ever, feeling Vern strain to keep them both upright as he slams him back into the plaster, eyes turned inward, unfocussed. Obviously using Beecher as some kind of glorified stress relief, desperately trying to fuck away the angst of yet another day on the downward spiral...
     ...trying. And failing.
     Busting my ass not quite the fun hobby it used to be, Vernon? The evil half of Beecher purrs, from somewhere deep inside. Well, try *this* on for size.
     And he hauls himself up by the older man's wide shoulders, wrapping his legs unexpectly around Vern's hips, and sending them stumbling back--off-balance--onto Sister Pete's "TO DO" pile: Pencils crunching under Vern's back, papers sweat-stained and crumpled. While Beecher continues to screw himself up and down onto Vern's dick, relentlessly--sort of like he's on top, for once. And Vern continues to buck and grind, hips in overdrive, sort of like...
     ...he LIKES it that way.
     Hands creeping up Beecher's sides, weirdly gentle, to play--through his issue t-shirt's fabric--with Beecher's hidden nipples. A startling sensation, and one which causes Beecher to flinch, to squirm, to do a bit of impromptu bucking of his own, in surprised, unwilling, unmistakable...arousal.
     (What *do* you think you're doing, you--freak?)
     Clenching inside, blush boiling up over his face like sunburn--and Vern, growling again, revelling in the gripping pressure on his buried cock. Tangling his legs around Beecher's. Flipping them over...
     ...and lifting Beecher's pelvis higher, so that the blond man's leaking dick grinds, sandwiched, between them--almost as though he were *trying* to make it pleasurable for *Beecher* as well.
     (Crazy as THAT sounds...)
     Still twisting those oh-so-responsive nubs, his thrusts slower, deeper, more unhurried than they've ever been before, careful to catch that traitorous gland inside Beecher with every stroke. And nuzzling him, licking him, rubbing his rough lion's head into the hollow of Beecher's jerking shoulder, across his throat, up over his jaw for a bruising, intrusive kiss, abrading his own cheeks with Beecher's dull gold stubble--
     (--and oh, God. Oh--)
     --*stop* it, damn it. Just STOP IT. Before--I--
     (start...actually...)
     ...*enjoying* this.
     Not just faking it. Not just giving Vern what he wants--or what he DOESN'T want, more like: A collaborator, a wiling victim. The kind of playmate who meets brute strength with ferocity, equally intense, biting and scratching.
     But this ISN'T brutal. Just...odd.
     Well, more than *odd*...
     Beecher feels Vern's mouth trace his cheekbone and moans, appallingly loud, eyes squeezing shut. Because the really disarming thing, the true terror of it, is that Vern is being sort of--reciprocal--for the first and only time, in his fierce and clumsy way. And that he, Beecher...
     ...is actually responding.
     'Cause any soft touch gets YOU hot, isn't that right, Tobias? No matter *who* it belongs to.
     (Chris, kissing Beecher's neck from behind in the pod, his lips full-on in the laundry room. Wrapping his arms around Beecher's shoulders and pulling their foreheads together, after McManus brought the news about Gen--that warm, slightly slick touch, comfort without compromise. Demanding nothing. Offering--everything.)
     ...and you, you monumental mook--you, who should have Goddamn well *known* better...
     Like anyone ever COULD want to touch you, now, without a hidden fucking agenda.
     A flick of snapped fingers stings his temple. Beecher opens his eyes again, to find Vern's fixed gaze mere inches from his own. Saying--and it's definitely not a question--
     "You like this."
     Another slow thrust, for punctuation. Beecher feels himself pump a slug-trail of lube, scarily thick--and gasps, replying:
     "...yeah."
     "Tobias." Closer, in his ear: "*Toby*."
     "Oh! Yes, yeah, yuh--*hessss*."
     Now...just lay OFF, you bastard.
     (Please.)
     But it goes on, and goes on, and it just keeps right on going, while the pleasure just keeps right on building. Bad as it used to be, back in those bad old days, when Vern would pay a mocking kind of "attention" to his "needs". Worse. Because this isn't a simple parody of having *sex*. This--is a parody--
     (--a very, very *effective* parody, mind you--)
     --of making LOVE.
     With Beecher impaled, stretched wide, strung and slit open on the very knife's edge of genuine orgasm: No fantasies of Chris to distract him from the here and now, however helplessly he might try to conjure them. The sure and certain knowledge that this man above him, inside him...his "owner", his rapist, this fucking Nazi fuck who's poisoned every possible portion of his already-ruined life...is about to make him come, for REAL, so hard his head might really *blow off* at the moment of impact.
    (Who's fucking whose brains out NOW, Toby?)
     As Vern demands, hoarse--
     "You're mine: Tell me."
     Breathless: "I'm...yours."
     "You always knew it."
     "I always knew it."
     And into his ear, again--a hot rush of breath, borne on even hotter tongue--
     "Then say it like you *mean* it, goddamnit!"
     There's a thread-like crack in Vern's voice, a widening hairline fracture. Almost...
     (...a sob?)
     To which Beecher, with an emphasis that surprises even himself, cries out--
     "I *always* knew it!"
     --as they explode, Atom bomb bright and Neutron bomb painful, two seared nuclear shadows melting to the surface of Sister Pete's desk--
     --together.

And: Vern collapses, full-length, with Beecher--the only "wife" he's got left, now--glued fast to him by a fresh mixture of his own sweat and semen, limbs coiled tight and locked, their hearts going like Geiger counters at Ground fuckin' Zero. Exhausted. His hand on FIRE. And realizing, like some dreadful, unsought epiphany:
     You fuck Beecher to feel better. And it's the only thing that *does* make you feel better, until the day--
     (today, as it happens)
     --when it DOESN'T. Anymore.
     When...in actual point of fact...it makes you feel, sort of--
     (*worse*)
     Lying there, all wrung out. Panting into the curve of Beecher's throat, his gold-fuzzed chin. Until, tentatively, he feels--
     --Beecher's palm slick, slowly, up the back of his neck, fingers splaying to cradle his unshaven skull--a spider's touch, barely *there* enough to register at all. While Beecher's other arm tightens around Vern--equally slow, equally light--into a kind of a...hug.
     (The--hell?)
     Because--he's *so* tense, still, even post-orgasm. So conflicted and unhappy. And Beecher, does he--see it? Could he, possible, actually...
     (...*care*?)
     An ambiguous, one-handed gesture: Maybe just simple recognition, basic empathy. Or maybe,  even, one of--
     (--affection.)
     For a minute, only a minute--a mere micro-minute, if that--Vern wants to rebel against this galling comfort, this unmanning, unmanly balm. Like: Fuck YOU, don't you *dare* feel sorry for me...
     (...'cause--that IS what you're doing, right?)
     Beecher, not looking at him. Him not looking at Beecher. The two of them knit and sprawled, his deflating cock already half-slack, easing slowly from the other man: All this frantic noise and effort, reduced--after the fact--to eight knotted limbs, two numb and shaken minds.
     (If I only knew, for one damn time, just what--the *hell*--this son-of-a-bitch is REALLY thinking...)
     But in order to understand Beecher's true motives, Vern would have to ask him straight out. Which he won't.
     Which is why, instead, he just lies there--
     (--and takes it.)

That evening, filtering back towards his pod from the laundry room (home to so many--interesting--memories), Chris Keller spots an indistinct figure hunched in the shadow of the stairwell and sidles up to investigate, only to find...
     ...Beecher, wild-haired and red-eyed like he was on that three-week drunk leading up to his "accident", a half-empty specimen jar of 100-proof cupped between his hands. Already so blind drunk he doesn't even realize anyone's there, 'till Chris leans down--worried, but knowing him well enough to be wary--and gives him a half-assed tap in the general direction of his shoulder--
     "Yo, *Beech*--"
     "Fuck off!" Beecher snaps, recognizing him--and recoils up against the wall, almost overbalancing, jar sloshing in protest. Quieting it, quickly, with another long swig.
     Keller sits back on his heels, hands up. "Hey, man, nothin' personal--"
     (as ever)
     "--I mean, you *wanna* go right back in the Hole on some bullshit drunk and disorderly rap, that's YOUR business. Just thought you might need a...lookout, or something."
     But Beech just hisses at Keller for his pains, like some feral cat: If you could *see* his ears, under that disordered mop of his, they'd be laid all the way back and twitching. He hugs his alcohol closer, a liquid security blanket.
     And: Wish you'd tell me what got you so damn upset, Beech, Keller thinks. Wish you'd hold *me* tight as you hold that hooch. But if wishes were horses...
     ...THEN fuckin' what?
     His second foster Mom had a million of those dumb little sayings, one for every day of the week--literally--or to justify every beating she doled out. Like this one, also about wishes: Something you need to get kids to stop doin', he guesses, 'fore they ask you for things you KNOW you can't deliver--
     *Wish in one hand, take a shit in the other--and see which one fills up faster.*
     Pretty solid advice, Toby. But I bet nobody ever told *you* that, back in the day.
     (More's the fuckin' pity.)
     Unable to come any closer, Keller retreats back to the corner and lingers there, his eyes peeled for any passing hacks...least he can do, really. So--of course--he does it.
     (Like always.)

Next morning:
     "You HAVE got to be kidding me."
     Whittlesey shakes her head. "Swear to God, Tim, she was frenching the Nazi son-of-a-bitch." Adding, after a long, musing swig of coffee: "I mean, what *is* Schillinger, some human form of crack? All's you have to do is look away from the guy for five minutes straight, and there's somebody tryin' to hump his leg."
     "Miss Renton *was* married to the man, Diane," Sister Pete points out, from over by the staff lounge's snack dispenser, where she's trying to coax a recalcitrant package of peanut brittle from its chosen refuge. "Twelve years. That's a lot of time to spend with somebody, if there's no physical attraction there at all."
     And isn't THAT a disgusting idea, Tim McManus thinks, looking down at his own coffee: Pretty Rachel Renton, tiny enough to heft with one hand, lip-locked--*voluntarily*--with Vern friggin' Schillinger. Will horrors never cease?
     He gives the coffee an extra stir, as though wiping the thought from his mind. Only to notice--
     "Aw, man! This cream must be off."
     Whittlesey, turning: "HERE comes trouble."
     McManus turns as well, eyes going to the door, and sees--
     --Kareem Said, coming up the stairwell, and taking it two righteously indignant steps at a time.
     (Oh, and he looks...pissed.)

Meanwhile, in the visitors' room--definitely *not* a contact visit, this time--
     --Vern Schillinger sits across from his legendary Old Man, Karl--who he hasn't seen, thank all that's fuckin' Holy, since their LAST heartwarming "counter": That time the old bastard told Vern he could give a shit *where* his drug-crazed grandsons had gone, then shot him the double finger on his way back out the door.
     (Come back here, Dad, you cocksucker!)
     Thinking: Ah, well; he's here now. Not that it makes a hot rat's shit worth of difference.
     (So I guess I might as well pick up the phone and find out what he wants--so I can get him to go the fuck *away* again.)
     The Old Man's voice, static-distorted: "Well, YOU look like shit."
     Vern (Tight-lipped): "Likewise."
     (You endless prick.)
     "Went to pick up Jan, yesterday. From the hospital." A pause. "Come to find out, your whore *wife* got there before me."
     "Yeah?"
     "That's right. Court tells me you gave her *custody*."
     "That's right."
     Karl Schillinger's face gives a brief, weird twist, Apple Grandad sour, like it's trying to pull itself inside-out. His terminal alcoholic's complexion goes bright red, shot through with broken veins: NOT a pretty sight.
     (But then, what else is new?)
     "Always *were* some kinda king broke-dick around that San Fran-sissy-co slut," he says. "Amazed you could get it up far enough to have those kids with her at all. You ever make 'em take the blood test?"
     Vern gives a long, deliberate huff through his bottom teeth, like a steam engine decompressing--or a bull, vaguely beginning to sense its own anger, revving up for the charge.
     "Ever tell you I fucked your girlfriend, Dad?" He asks.
     The Old Man grins. "Yeah? Which one?" Pausing: "Hell--don't matter, I guess. Sure HAD enough, in my day."
     (Not like *you*. You fuckin' jailbird faggot.)
     Continuing: "Hey, I ever tell you why I cheated on your Ma? 'Cause she had to be the worst, I mean the all-time, world's worst was lay. Couldn't raise a stiffie off an Eskimo in an ice-storm."
     Vern feels his hands fist, so hard the plaster on his new cast starts to crack around the edges. Unable to stop himself.
     (Even if he wanted to.)
    "You were never fit to kiss that woman's ass," he says. Softly.
    "Naw, guess not. 'Cause that was always *your* job, wasn't it?"
    "You made my boys into junkies, you sick piece of shit."
    "Yep."
    Leaning forward---hissing--*grinning*--
    "And YOU let me."

When they make their report, the visiting rooms hacks will say *this* is what happens, next: Vern makes a buzzsaw noise, deep in his throat, and hurls himself headlong against the glass that separates him from his father. When C.O. Grover Hensley tries to interfere, Vern twists, kicks him full in the face with one big. black boot and grabs his nighstick as he goes down--then spins back again, hammering at the barrier with it like it was a half-sized baseball bat. Managing to actually *crack* the glass where the stick lands first, and having the distinct--if fleeting--pleasure of seeing his Old Man recoil in shock...
     ...in FEAR, almost...
     ...before they drag him away to the Hole, laying whatever's handy to him as they go. 'Cause you DON'T step to no GUARD, motherFUCKER! Not *ever*!
     While Vern just laughs, wildly. Howling like some Black Forest direwolf locked in an aging man's lumpy, badly-decorated flesh, as they sling him naked through that iron door:
     Yeah? Well, bring it *on*, you scumbags! Bring it fuckin' ON!
     After which--the door clangs shut. The key turns. And he's left alone, feeling the phantom touch of Beecher's hand once more, that instinctive caress of terrible understanding.
     The insult of being KNOWN, inside and out, in all your many weaknesses. Or that anyone *can* know you so well, the way nobody else should, unless they're...
     (...married to you, or something.)
     Alone with the misery, his bereavement--the fading image of Rachel still burnt along every nerve, like pain from some lost limb--Vern buries his face in his hands and curls on his side, curls into a ball on the cold, stone floor...
     ...and welcomes the coming darkness.

End Part 8/2
 

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE Part 9

"COUNT!"
The morning after, Beecher wakes hungover like never before (and *that*'s saying something), with a mouth full of rotten cat-fur and a head like an impacted wisdom tooth: Too sick to puke, and too utterly paralyzed with self-contempt even to cry about it. His barely-reset bones feel like they've been cored; everything hurts equally.
     Then someone lays firm hands on his limp, alcohol-poisoned shoulders, shaking him upright--Keller's dark eyes peering down at him, concerned and annoyed, accompanied by a voice so dim it feels more like telepathy than conversation: Yo, Beech, you dumb lush--hear that? 'S count, baby.
     So get the fuck *up*.
     While, in the very back of his mind, another tiny voice moans--the way he can't right now, maybe later, thanks anyway--
     (Ohhhhh...)
     ...and fuck, fuck, *fuhhhck YOU*.
     "G'hoffame,"  Beecher mutters, mind snappy as ever, for all his body stays rag-doll compliant in Keller's arms--unable to do much more than flop stubbornly in protest, as the taller man wrangles his legs over the side of the bed and hoists him vertical.
     But: "Yeah, yeah," Keller replies, unimpressed.
     And propells them both out the door, propping Beecher up against the pod's outer wall, as the hack on duty--friendly ol' C.O. Karl Metzger, worse luck--works his way down the line, reeling off names and numbers: O'Reilly, Ryan; O'Reilly, Cyril; Rebadow, Robert; Busmalis, Agamemnon (back from the infirmary at last, his wounds from the mini-riot all plugged and packed, that freaky hat of his crammed on at a celabratorily jaunty angle); Keller, Christopher; Beecher--
     Staring down at him, ash-pale and bloody-eyed, weaving slightly in Keller's shadow; wrinkling his oh-so-all-American nose at the stale 100 proof-sweat stench leaking from the ex-lawyer's skin, and observing, lightly:
     "Not lookin' so good today, are we? *Tobias*."
     The clear implication: *Not that you ever have, really--to ME.*
     (Thank fuckin' God.)
     Beecher, dully: "Needa go th'infirmary. Geh my...Tylenol."
     "Yeah, well: You make sure and do that."
     "...'ssir."
     A half-in-the-bag approximation of his usual, Vern-induced obsequiousness--clumsy, but automatic. To which Metzger just snorts, slightly, and turns away: A neat, clean movement, unexpectedly quick enough to evoke both vertigo *and* nausea.
     Watching, Beecher feels his stomach roil, his legs begin to give out. Turns himself, clutching his gut, and almost makes it all the way to the toilet before...the inevitable.
     Sometime later, he heaves (oh, Lord; try *not* to think of that word) back up, clawing for the toiler's handle. And hears Keller, from behind him--his voice amused, almost admiring--
     "Man, Beech. Never can do shit half-way, can ya?"
     "Nope," Beecher replies, hoarse, throat bile-burnt. Thinking:
     That's right, Chris--'cause, see, when *I* make mistakes, they tend to be big ones. Just ask Gen. Or Kathy Rockwell. Or--yourself, for that matter. Or...
     (...Vern.)
     Aw, *shit*.
     He struggles to gain his feet again, totters a few halting steps, toddler-shaky--only to find Keller blocking his way. Reminding him:
     "Hey. Infirmary's north, 'member?"
     "Goh'ago--"
     "--get your Tylenol; right, fine. I'll walk ya--still workin' up there, right? No biggie."
     Beecher sighs. Then tries again--making a concerted effort, this time, to be coherent.
     "Mean, I--look, I goh'a. *Gotta*. Pick up. Schillinger's...laundry. Okay?"
     Now Keller snorts--and looks considerably more attractive, doing it.
     "Yeah, well," he says, "ol' Vern ain't gonna *have* any laundry, to speak of, next month or so. Seein' how they threw HIS lumpy Aryan ass in the Hole."
     Beecher frowns. "When?"
     "Yesterday. Back when you were doin' your business with Luis, probably."
     "How ya--know? 'Bout that?"
     Keller laughs. "Toby. Who you think put *your* ass to bed, last night? The hooch fairy?"
     "Don'...call me Toby."
     "Sure. Baby."
     (Oh, you shameless 'ho.)
     But: Not like YOU should talk, after all. Right, Toby?
     (*Baby*?)
     And the memory, taking hold of him once more, with no lingering scrim of alcohol to dull its awful sting. Vern growling in his ear, lion-hot, as they do the dirty deed on Sister Peter Marie's sanctified desktop--hitting that spot inside, again and again, with expert care. And Beecher beneath him, arching, moaning--
     *Tobias. TOBY.*
     *You LIKE this.*
     (Oh! Yessssss...)
     That's right. I really...did.
     (And ain't THAT a kick in the fuckin' head? *Sweetpea.*)
     Still, what's worse, really? That you did it, liked it...well and truly slid, though never meaning to, across that slippery line between merely letting Vern rape you and finding yourself making honest-to-badness LOVE of some kind with that unspeakable old Nazi bastard? Or that, afterward, you actually found yourself feeling--
     (*sorry*)
     --for him?
     (HIM)
     Sick as that sounds. As that *is*. Sick as you'd have to be, to even conceive of it.
     But no, that's not the worst thing. Because the WORST thing, the very worst--worse than anything else...
     (almost)
     ...that's happened to Beecher so far, here in Oz--is knowing that nothing he's learned about himself, *or* about Vern, will end up making a damn bit of difference to these intricate, instinctual plans of revenge he's already set in motion: The alliances he's made, the sacrifices he's endured.
     *You lay there and took it,* Keller had told him, that time in the infirmary, before Beecher had quite made up his mind to ride Vern's snake just as far as it'd take him, and see whether or not Hell really did have a bottom; before Keller's own touch, searing him from stem to stern, convinced him to well and truly put his money where his mouth was.
     He said it, though. And did it. And now that he's finally stood up--
     (*finally*)
     --well, he can't just lie down again. Not even if he wanted to.
     And DO you want to, Toby? That little voice inside his head asks, slyly. Murmuring, a moment later: Be...honest.
     (If you can.)
     Beecher raises his pounding head, gives Keller a long, cold stare: Sees his own eyes stare back, twin blue gas-jets, reflected in doubled miniature on those wine-dark irises. Vern's long-lost discard, converted by fate and the vagaries of the penal system into Beecher's hawk-faced seducer, his never-lover--the man whose mere presence, even now, is enough to set every hair on Toby's aching body erect and alight with sheer sexual electricity: A pheremonal feedback loop, doubling and redoubling with every breath he takes, every move he makes. Every cake he bakes. Every...
     (...leg he breaks?)
     Yeah, I'm talking 'bout *you*, cupcake, Beecher tells him, silently. You, you--lying, cheating, whoring, double-crossing, neck-kissing, groin-groping, getting-a-guy-all-hot- and-bothered-and-then-getting-yourself-thrown-in-the-goddamned-Hole-before-anything-even-gets-a-chance-to-HAPPEN...low-down, freaky, sexy, traitorous motherFUCKER, you.
     So much time already spent--wasted, really--avoiding him, rebuffing him. Fighting him off, one inch at a time--one underhanded, hellaciously subtle, nerve-sparking brush-by at a time, here in this tiny space they share. Forced to breathe his air, smell his scent. Drift into sleep, and out again, inextricably coccooned in a net made from Keller's warm, intoxicating breath.
     And all for what? To postpone that date they made, together, in the laundry-room--back before Vern called in his marker, and Chris had to deliver on quite a different bargain. Back before Beecher *knew* any better.
     The snap, times four; the laugh, like an extra kick to the gut: A crowing, satisfied, triumphant kind of yodle, hideously gleeful over the sight of Beecher's pain. While Vern laughs along, like it's the world's best joke--and Metzger, that fucker, just stands there. Watching.
     *That*'s what I feel every time you touch me, Chris; even now, when I'm fairly sure that all you want to do is make it up to me...the only way, I guess, that you know how. That's why I shy from you, even after what you did--
     (WE did)
     --up against the wall, with my terminal blinking away beside us, and me dancing the Wild Thing on your hip. Why I still can't ever let *you* know how much I liked--
     (LOVED)
     --it, for fear of...what?
     Being weak? Looking stupid? Making yet ANOTHER--big--mistake?
     (I mean--I've done *worse*.)
     Thinking, then, with that same sick jitter he felt back in the post office closet: Should've just asked me straight out, baby. 'Cause, apparently, that's all it takes--long as you're the guy who burned a SWASTIKA on my ass. Hell, do it nice enough, I'll even tell you I'm "yours"...and--mean it, too.
     (At the time, at least.)
     Beecher sighs. And says, at last, aloud but slowly--while keeping his eyes, very firmly, on Keller's--
     "--bet...you pro'ly think this's your big chance, now. Or something."
     Keller, meanwhile, just watches him, cat-still. Not even bothering to shrug.
     Concluding: "Well...iss not."
     "Okay," Keller replies.
     "*Mean* it, Chris."
     "Okay."
     (...okay.)

Except that it isn't, of course. Not with Beecher being Beecher, Keller being Keller, and this--being *Oz*.
     (Never IS.)

An hour later, Beecher--cleaned up, medicated, rehydrated, slightly less (overtly) traumatized--puppets himself stiffly into Sister Pete's office, scene of his most recent crime against himself, only to be immediately confronted by living fallout from the crime before: Tim McManus glowering at him from the corner as Sister Pete herself hovers nearby, arms crossed, lips pursed. Greeting Beecher, as he steps through the door:
     "Tobias...Mr McManus has something he wants to *ask* you."
     Like whether or not I stole Said's psych file? Beecher wonders. While McManus demands, at almost exactly the same time:
     "Did you steal Said's psych file, Beecher?"
     (Wow. Just call me psychic.)
     "And--why would I do that, exactly?"
     "Considering what got done with it? Because Schillinger told you to, that'd be *my* first guess."
     Uh oh. Maybe this psychic stuff works both ways.
     Beecher feels his nausea, blessedly dormant since this morning's brief scream through the big white porcelain megaphone, begin to rise anew. To distract himself, he repeats: "What got...done with it."
     Annoyed: "DON'T tell me you haven't heard."
     "Fine. Fact is, though--I *haven't*."
     They glare at each other, as Sister Pete sighs, sharply. Explaining:
     "Kareem Said came into the staff lounge yesterday, Tobias, *very* upset. He says a friend of his was surfing the Internet, and found large sections of Said's psych file--his CONFIDENTIAL psych file--posted at various neo-Nazi sites." She pauses. "With...commentary."
     (Oh, I'll just bet.)
     "Gee," Beecher responds, toneless--doing a remarkable, if (mainly) unconscious, Vern Schillinger imitation. "THAT sucks."
     And now it's McManus's--long overdue--turn to flush.
     "Said's threatening to *sue*: Em City, Oswald, Warden Glynn, ME."
     (The really *important* part of the equation, eh, Timmy-boy?)
     Continuing, as though amazed--and insulted--by the very idea: "He claims we...*violated his privacy.*"
     Beecher shrugs. "Well, not my area, really--but I'd say he's got a case."
     "I notice you never answered my question."
     "No. Never did, did I?"
     Locking eyes with Em City's resident wizard once again, bloodshot and narrowed vs. pale with righteous indignation--and throwing McManus off his stride long enough, finally, to notice just *how* crappy Beecher actually looks: Lips strained and white under a day's worth of dull gold shadow; one hand braced delicately against the wall, fairly clawing for support. That stink, fainter after his pre-mess hall shower, but hardly eradicated. That sulky, provoking half-sneer.
     Their silent conversation takes only a few seconds--two brief questions, asked and answered, without either of them ever opening their mouth. And it goes a little something like this:
     You're hung *over*, Tobias. Aren't you?
     ...mmmaybe.
     And you DID steal that file.
     ...mmmaybe.
     (But it's not like I'm gonna *admit* it.)
     *So either throw me in the Hole, offer me a Gravol--or fuck the fuck OFF.*
     Just as McManus is about to demand overt vocal confirmation of his suspicions, however, Sister Pete--Beecher's self-elected God Squad savior--steps in.
     "Why don't you let ME have a few words with Tobias, Tim?"
     (In *private*.)
     McManus looks at her. Hisses through his teeth, briefly. And asks Beecher--a throwaway, last resort offer, before the nun gets her turn at bat--
     "You know Schillinger went ballistic in the vistors' room, right?"
     "I heard that, yes."
     "So--if you had something you wanted to tell me...just if, just supposing...then he wouldn't be around to stop you. From telling me."
     To which--Beecher smiles, thinly. Gives a little snort of his own. And replies:
     "Too bad I don't have anything to tell you, then. Isn't it?"
     (Mr TRAVEL AGENT.)
     McManus spins. Throws Sister Pete a look.
     "He's all yours, Sister," he says, tightly. "Be my guest."
     And walks out.
     Beecher sighs at the sight, so glad to see McManus's back he really would applaud, if only he thought he could get away with it. Asking Sister Pete: "Mind if I sit down?"
     To which she replies, shortly, and with uncharacteristic chilliness--"You do whatever makes you happy, Tobias."
     The clear implication being: Because--this does, obviously. All of it.
     (So who am *I* to tell you any different?)
     And Beecher, feeling a contradictory surge of resentment, catches himself thinking: Well, Geez--you could at least *try*.
     But she can't hold the pose for long, pissed as his betrayal--and his refusal to play along with her attempts to cover up for him, aside from going limp under McManus's probing--must have made her. Her tired eyes shift back to him, full of a barely-repressed, slightly acid sorrow--and God, they DO look tired--
     "Just stop, Tobias," she says, softer. "Whatever you're doing, just...stop."
     "I can't."
     "Won't, you mean."
     Equally soft: "...that too."
     Pain in his chest, now, to match the lingering throb in his head. An instinctive clenching against ingratitude: Someone's trying to HELP you, damn it! *Let* them!
     "You're so much better than this," she tells him, simply. "You *deserve*--better."
     Oh, Sister. If you only knew.
     Gone toneless, again: "Do I?"
     "YES, Tobias." She pauses, searching for the right words. "Look: I'm not privy to every detail, but I think I'm maybe a little smarter than you give me credit for being--and from what I've seen, you are not only DOING wrong, you're going *about* it all wrong, too. Can't you see that?"
     A hint of black humor in his voice: "You mean there's a RIGHT way to do wrong?"
     "...no. That is *not* what I mean. I mean...okay, I guess I don't really know WHAT I mean. But I do know you're only hurting yourself, Tobias! Hurting--"
     (me)
     "--the people who love you."
     Oh. And they'd be...who, at this point? Exactly?
     Gen, *his* dead wife--REALLY dead, leaving her body jammed behind the wheel for the kids to find, and him nothing but the blame. Or the kids themselves, Bobbi and little Cullen--same ones he's already decided he'll never see again, even if their grandparents do ever finally prove amenable to the idea of contact visits. Or, even better, HIS parents: Mother, burying her shame at the bottom of a martini shaker and a handful of prescription pills--*great* interventional role-model there, for anyone dealing with substance abuse problems. And his father...well.
     (Not quite a father/son relationship from hell on the scale of Vern and *his* Old Man, but nothing to write home about, either.)
     And who's THAT leave? Cyril? *Ryan*?
     *CHRIS*?
     (...Vern?)
     Pain shifting to anger, then, in one fell swoop--one smooth, swift emotional u-turn. Prompting him to snap back, unnecessarily harsh:
     "Puh-lease. Why don't you on on ahead and tell me what I *deserve*, Sister? We both know I stole that file. Let Schillinger fuck me afterward, too--in here, right on top of your desk: You like *that* image?" Voice cracking, suddenly: "Shit, I'm no innocent--I KILLED Kathy Rockwell. There's career fucking criminals in here less guilty than me."
     Oh, and I *am* guilty, beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt. Because a jury of my peers said so. Because Kathy's mother screamed it, through that glass barrier: Cursed me aloud, spit at my shielded face. And because I--
     --KNOW so.
     Every minute of every hour, every hour of every day. Every day for the next twelve years, up for parole in three: World without end, forever and ever, amen.
     'Let the punishment fit the crime'--and mine sure has, hasn't it, Sister? 'Side from me still being alive, that is.
     (For now.)
     "And you," He says, aloud. "You want me to, what--forgive and forget?"
     "Something like that, yes."
     "Uh huh. 'Go thou, and sin NO MORE'--that about the size of it, Sister? Like it's *just* *that* *easy*."
     "It COULD be."
     (...could it?)
     *God is punishing me," he'd said to her, once--just hoping to hear it confirmed, he guesses. Only to have her reply: *But GOD doesn't punish, Tobias. People punish. They punish each other...*
     (...and they punish themselves.)
     And oh, Christ--is *that* what I've been doing? Holding myself up to some impossible standard, adding sentences onto sentences--then blaming the people I set up to carry them out, as though blaming the scourge I CHOSE to flagellate myself with?
     Judge Lima says "twelve years in Oz!", and--under your breath--you add, subconsciously: Plus rape, humiliation, mutilation, revenge...a half-year gone feral, labelled face-shitter, dick-biter...false hope followed by lapse and relapse under pressure, one broken heart, four stomped and shattered limbs...
     But Sister Pete's speaking again, out on the very edge of his self-evisceration. Explaining, with sweet and damnable reason:
     "No, I'm not going to play along and give you one more reason to treat yourself like the victim you claim you don't want to be--but I will tell you *this*, Tobias: Deep as the hole you're in looks now, you will NOT stay here forever. One day, you *will* leave Oz, and you'll go home..."
     (...where you'll have to live the rest of your life with the choices you've made--one way, or another.)
     Beecher gives a tiny, liquid laugh. Suggesting:
     "And all I have to do is...have *faith*."
     Simply: "Yes."
     The laugh repeats itself, turning bitter, twisting up from deep within.
     "Man, you don't want MUCH, do you?"
     Shaking, almost imperceptibly--eyes stinging, tone wobbling--under the weight of her awful sympathy...just like Vern did, yesterday, under Beecher's own impulsive, knowing touch. And for nearly the exact same reasons, all told.
     "Oh, Tobias," Sister Pete says, almost under her breath. And goes to hug him, arms opening wide--only to have him recoil, rigid. Putting up a hand to ward her off.
     "No. Just--no." A pause; then, clearer: "'Cause--I am NOT going to stop, so...you just better let me go. McManus's job transfer thing, right? Been exempt long enough; people'll start thinking I have...special privileges, or something."
     She frowns, confused. "You're--*quitting*?"
     A shaky smile. "Hey, any monkey can learn Lotus, you take the time to teach him. I'll go half-days, train my replacement: How's THAT for a severance package? One-time-only offer, Sister."
     'Cause...I don't think you want to be around me anymore, not when I'm like this--and I damn well KNOW I don't want to be around *you*.
     She looks at him; he looks away, anywhere but--trembling still, but calmer. Adamant.
     "Is that REALLY what you want?" She asks, at last. Sadly.
     "Yes."
     And the unspoken reply, plain in her eyes: Then God help you, Tobias Beecher. Until the day you finally learn to stop whining over your wounds, get the fuck up off your branded ass, and help *yourself*.
     (Ah, Sister.)
     Well, God help me indeed, Beecher thinks. Why not? Need all the back-up I can get, these days, and I'll take it where it's offered...even from a tumor.
     (Assuming the cancerous son-of-a-bitch even exists at all.)

In the infirmary, meanwhile, Chris Keller runs his mop back and forth across the floor and watches the action from the corner of one dark eye: That Hispanic orderly passing drugs to his clientel, and accepting payment on the sly; Dr Nathan, chart in hand, catching Ryan O'Reilly's gaze through the glass and bustling off like she just remembered something she forgot, while the Irishman sidles after. Took him a little while to twig to *that* particular soap opera subplot, what with O'Reilly keepin' it so quiet, but proximity is a bitch when it comes to secrets--as even the self-elected Lord of the Dance must surely know.
     So CUTE to watch them together, though--just like puppies, or something. Like--
     (--Beech and me, way back when.)
     Way, *way* back, now--Dark Age, Stone Age, Cretaceous Period. The Rise and Fall of the Roman fuckin' Empire. Ancient history, dead and gone, ashes to ashes--
     (--dust to dust.)
     Their "courtship period", he guesses some outside observer might have called it: The chess-playing, joke-telling, coinfidence-sharing portion of the evening. And wrestling, too, here and there, to relieve a bit of the built-up tension--pinning Beech to the ground just to feel him squirm, an elbow in the flat of his back, snuffling his body's hot fragrance. Staring down at that pale, gold-furred--*nape*--of his, all sweaty under Beech's slicked-up hair...
     ...and wanting, desperately, to sink his teeth where Vern Schillinger's had already been. Sink them in and lock on tight, deep enough to leave a mark that'd last long after their mutual former "master" was giving Satan the one-armed salute in Hell.
     Half-hard then, just thinking about it, though careful not to let it show. And fully so, now--just remembering.
     Movement at the door: Aryan heir apparent Fritz Duchene, reassigned after the post office burned down, arriving to pick up today's garbage--along with a far more costly package, wrapped deep in blood-soaked bandages: O'Reilly's latest heroin shipment, ready for distribution, with the Brotherhood unwittingly doing *his* dirty work.
     Catching Keller's eye, and shooting him the high sign. And Chris smiling, back, thinking: Yeah, yeah--nice to see you too, moron. Now go vandalize a mosque, or something, and let me get back to the task at hand.
     That task, of course, being to figure out how best to use his time alone with Beech--before Vern gets out of the Hole, and everything goes back to...
     ...normal.
     (Like that word and Vern's name should ever be used in the same sentence.)
     Chris pauses, mid-sweep--feels that weird little tickle, again: A spasm of jealousy, narrow and green as O'Reilly's eyes, twisty as his lying tongue. Just like the other day, back in the mess hall, watching Beech's cheek brush Vern's--leaning to murmur something in his ear-- while everyone around them whooped and hollered at the old Nazi's discomfort; rapist and rape-ee, dancing around each other like some dysfunctional old married couple.
     And Beech, pumping out that cold, strange, sexy cripple vibe of his, every move a study in contemptuous seduction. Hooking his cane over the back of his chair and eating a banana from the bottom up, like he was giving it a fuckin' full-contact *blowjob*, while Vern shifted in his seat...then biting the shaft in half, and grinning at the way it made him cringe.
     Keller, too. Truth--
     (--whatever THAT is--)
     --be told.
     Wanting Beech to look at *him* that way, hatred and all, so long as it got Keller a chance to feel those lips on HIS unpeeled fruit...and wondering why Vern never had, even back when CHRIS was the one playing wife.
     Jealous. But--of who?
     And *why*?
     Keller casts his eyes to the wet floor, bites his own lips shut: Already knowing the answer, to BOTH questions--knowing it intimately, one might say.
     Much as he might wish he didn't.

On the other side of Dr Nathan's office door, meanwhile--
     Ryan O'Reilly knits his fingers in the silky mass of Gloria Nathan's dark, dark hair and gasps, head thrown back in a neck-straining arc--jaws apart, the scar on his chin deformed by the rictus of his own ecstasy. Eyes rolled 'till they show only white. Hips thrusting, a runaway machine.
     Thinking, as near to incoherence as his nefarious mind can ever get: Ooooow, Jesus. *Jesus*. JeeEEE*EEEES*--
     And then spurting hard and boiling hot, like some Yellowstone Park geyser--feeling Gloria's mouth, her...glorious, glorious mouth, dew-wet as some thirsty desert flower...nursing him down again. That teasing, velvet tongue, spreading white light through every nerve--teeth scraping back towards his tip like the condom isn't even there, the world's sweetest torture, and milking him just beneath the flange of his aching cock. Her throat working, pressed up against the baby-smooth skin of his vulnerable inner thigh, where the femoral artery lurks; pumping seed from him, some black magic trick in action--more and more with every mimed swallow, without ever seeming to drain him dry.
     It's like his pelvic girdle's cracking open, like he's died and *hasn't* gone to Hell. Like he'd die gladly, over and over, to even DREAM of feeling what he's feeling now. And like
he'd kill--
     (--HAS killed--)
     --would tear any stupid motherfucker who got in his way apart with his bare fuckin' hands and bathe in his hot red blood, just to feel it again.
     Vaguely, he realizes he's forgotten to breathe--so he takes a long, shuddering gulp of air, lets slip one last, thin moan. And whispers:
     "Oh, Gloria, angel--pinch me, will ya? 'Cause there's no WAY this is real."

And: You got *that* right, you son-of-a-bitch, Dr Nathan thinks, as she forces herself to look back up at him--and smile.
     "Ryan," she says.
     "...angel."
     "Do you want to touch me?"
     Watching his green eyes widen at the very idea. Hearing him moan again, in answer--more of a groan, actually.
     (Yeah. 'Cause I KNOW you do.)
     Same way I want to touch *you*, Ryan--to glut myself with your skin, your mouth, your hands. Feed this desire I can't get rid of, until we both think we're going to explode. And then...
     And then, I'm gone. Because I can be.
     (*Will be.* Soon enough.)
     While you...get to stay right here. And THINK about it.
     Gloria slips the lab coat from her shoulders--slowly, as though it were a piece of silk lingerie--and unbuttons the front of her practical, durable, washable cotton-blend shirt, revealing a similarly plain white cotton bra: High-cut cups, scalloped lightly with lace. Knowing the mere, stark contrast between the bra's whiteness and her brown satin skin will be enough to make him instantaneously hard once more. Knowing she could be wearing a bullet-proof vest, and he'd have exactly the same reaction.
     Slowly, as though afraid she may evaporate at any moment, Ryan stretches out his hands--spans her breasts with delicate care, fingers fanning lightly over each cinnamon-colored mound. Digging his thumbs beneath the clasp in front, and applying just enough pressure to pop it apart, freeing her (fairly limited, in her own opinion) hidden assets: A bare double handful, topped with two yearning chocolate peaks.
     At the sight of them unleashed, he slips from the chair with a cry, burying his face in her neck. And Gloria feels her whole body clench against him, a rush of sudden moisture soaking her panties through--the same instinctual response she's fought so hard and failed so miserably to conquer, all these long nights since Tim first told her that the cops had finally found her missing...
     (ex)
     ...husband Preston's--*dead*--body.
     Cyril O'Reilly's work, by Ryan O'Reilly's command. Foolish empathy gone very, very wrong, with Preston left to pay the price for something he didn't even know *she*'d ever done: Been stupid enough to feel sorry for Ryan, Em City's resident Machiavel, only to see her best intentions violated with an ease that still makes her skin crawl--willfully misinterpreted in a way that showed her, head-on, the deepest, darkest, most hidden parts of herself.
     Ryan's trying to kiss her now, blindly seeking for her lips and tongue as she avoids him at every turn, allowing him nothing closer than her chin, her cheek, her throat--nothing more intimate than her nipples burning his palms, one hand fishing him clear of his fly and jerking upward, peeling the used condom free. Tossing him a fresh one (more medical sleight of hand) and waiting, silent, while he fumbles with it; hiking her skirt up, waist-high, to show him the damp and shiny folds, the opening cleft, that stiff and tender pearl which tops her unshelled oyster.
     Falling further, face-first. Lapping and rooting, roles reversed, as his hands slip beneath her, cupping, gripping--breasts abandoned, momentarily, for the springy cheeks of her ass, the long muscles of her thighs. And the awful pleasure of it, spiralling upwards, radiating out: Husking her brain, making her struggle not to lose this slippery thread of dreams, memories, plans...
     The day she first diagnosed Schillinger's carpal tunnel syndrome, *that*'s when she decided. Yet another "chance" meeting, patently staged to get Beecher within range of his tormentor; O'Reilly, hard at work on yet another scheme, with lies and murder gleaming at the heart of every move.
     Remembering her own words to Tim, after Ryan's confession bought Preston's killer over the rainbow and into Emerald City's welcoming gates: *No one will ever love me the way that Ryan O'Reilly loves me. And I'm going to have to live with that...
     (...for the rest of my life.)
     They'd given him more time, of course, as though THAT meant anything. Life on top of life: So fucking what? He's *alive*, either way.
     (But Preston--isn't.)
     And no, they hadn't been together at the time; yes, she'd wanted a separation, possibly a divorce. Had wondered, increasingly, what her life might be like with no Preston in the picture at all. But NONE of that meant she'd--wanted him--
     (dead)
     ...had it?
     God, God, God. Still silent in the face of everything, leaving her to draw her own conclusions.
     I *saved* you, O'Reilly. I held you when you cried. And you, for the sake of a little human comfort, a restrained sexual thrill--a mere moment's shiver of flesh against death, understanding in the face of mortality--
     --you ruined my life.
     Infected with lust for a man she can never condone wanting, or brand herself a murderer by proxy. She can't ignore him; she's tried. Can't distract herself with fantasies, or sate herself with alternatives: Poor, equally screwed-up McManus, for example. So now...
     ...we go the other route, she thinks, colder than she can ever remember feeling, for all her reckless sexual heat. And we keep to it, as far as it goes, before the road finally splits.   Before I go on to exile, back to my chilly protests about "why I became a doctor". And Ryan stays here in Hell--finally deprived enough to actually start *suffering*, for once.
     Confronting him, behind his screen: Ryan...
     (...we have to talk.)
     But: Talk never really having been her PRIMARY aim, in actual fact. Talk being--the very least of it.
     (The very, *very* least.)
     Shoving Ryan back off with a wrench now, his tongue unplugging her--an aching absence. And squatting up onto him, quickly, his blunt, latex-wrapped head sliding to lodge against her entrance. Teasing him with the touch of her, the slick liquid give.
     (You want this, Ryan?)
     Ohhhh, yes. I know.
     (Me too.)
     And what would you do, exactly? What WOULD you do, given the chance--to get it?
     Well. We *both* know the answer to that one.
     And she forces herself downward, lips finding his at last: A biting kiss, a sting, more bitter--and intoxicating--than mead made from poisoned honey. Drunk with the irony of it, using her own body as an inescapable trap. The lie, and the truth, that forms the pattern for  her revenge on Oz's liar king--a lie made FROM truth. Always the best kind.
     (I learned *that*...from YOU.)
     "Angel," he whispers once more, into her mouth--hand burrowing frantically between them, strumming her sparking clit. Thrusting. Gasping.
     *Devil*, she thinks back. And closes her eyes.
     As they--both--
     --explode.
     (On contact.)

End Part 9/1

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE, 9/2

Three more days pass, slowly: The numbing, "normal" routine of Oz, further exacerbated by Christopher Keller and Tobias Beecher's equally "normal" little dance of proximity--shaving, teeth-brushing, relieving themselves. Toby updating his notes on Cyril O'Reilly's appeal, or giving Cyril himself excruciatingly close-quarters, excruciatingly *slow* chess lessons; Chris going slowly nuts from trying NOT to act on the various impulses which Beecher's teasing presence provokes in him: *Not* scope him out, *not* brush up against him as they jostle for the john. *Not* grab him, throw him up against the wall, and yank his chain 'till the two of them think they're gonna come blood.
     'Cause...you gotta be subtle, right? Can't just jump on a guy--
     (Well, not anymore, *that*'s for sure.)
     'Specially when the guy in question's a sexually-gunshy, easily-startled mixture of overcivilized dweeb and feral concubine, as likely to bite the hand that strokes him as he is to lick it, purr, kiss you so deep and sweet and hard you're about to pop in your shorts like some sixteen-year-old with his first taste of pussy...
     Okay, STOP IT, Chris. *Right* fuckin' now.
     (...but--*Jesus*!)
     Keller clenches his teeth, remembering the stolen pleasures of five months earlier, culminating in that all-too-brief, semi-public laundry-room clinch: A litany of potentialities, never shared, lost before they had a chance to spark anything more than a few hot dreams. And remembering, also--from the far less distant past--
     --dragging Beecher's hooch-slack body through the pod door, after evening count, and heaving him face-down across the bottom bunk, just as the lights went out. And pausing there, panting, mesmerized by that casually-revealed strip of gold-furred flesh between where the tail of Beech's t-shirt had ridden up and the waistband of his prison-issue pants. Those compact, surprisingly broad shoulders, usually slumped in misery or knotted with repressed tension. Those half-spread legs. That spine. That--nape.
     (Man, I really got some kind of *fetish* about that NAPE.)
     And thinking, gripped to the core by a rush of lust so intense it shocked even him--Chris Keller, sex machine supreme, able to get it up on command for anything animal (male OR female), vegetable, mineral, Aryan, whatever--
     Oh Toby, *baby*. If I only had the time--and the lube--I'd pull those tacky boxers off you with my teeth and show you just how much fun your ex-Yuppie ass can really be, when you're not gettin' forced to give it up for Adoph Hitler's love-child. Eat you for hours, long and slow; tease you 'till you arch and pant and *beg* me on hands and knees to reach inside, find that gland and give it a turn of two--or two HUNDRED--
     Slide to the hilt, a heartbeat at a time, and just...wait. For *you* to start humping back, whimpering, squalling--groaning and gasping and calling me names, anything and everything you can think of, so long as it makes me MOVE, *thrust*, *FUCK* you 'till you go off like Krakatoa, Bikini Atoll, Hiro-fuckin'-shima...
     With nothing left over for Vern Schillinger to plunder, ever again.
     (And everything else--for us.)
     At the same time, though, hearing a mocking little voice in his head: That simple, huh, Chris? Good sex conquers all?
     (Well...sometimes.)
     *Most* of the time.
     (For ME.)
     But this is Beecher we're talking about, here--same guy deals with every little setback by falling head-first into the nearest addiction: Booze, drugs, revenge. A real live guilt magnet, only happy when it rains; always gotta beat himself up about *something*...
     (...or find somebody else to do it FOR him.)
     And: You really wanna volunteer for *that* position, Chris? Wanna slip right in where Vern pulled out, and take sloppy seconds?
     (Well--sorta.)
     Standing there, lead-pipe-hard, while Toby snored on in drunken sleep--dreaming of pre-Oz life, maybe. Boardroom meetings and dinner parties, all blond and blue and boring, just another suit with glasses and a 'tude: kind of guy Keller'd cut behind on his bike, close enough to scratch his Beamer's bumper, and shoot the finger when he yelled out the window. A cell-phone-usin', ulcer-developin', mortgage-payin', secretary-marryin'--'cause that's what she *was*, that big-hair wife of yours, I'd lay even money on it--ball-less, sexless, hopeless little law-boy...
     ...brat.
     An angry man, pretending to be calm; an unhappy man, pretending to love the rut he was stuck in. A strong man, pretending to be weak, to make everyone around him feel better.
     No WONDER you drank, baby--I would, too, that was *my* life.
     And never knowing, never guessing, never even able to conceive, in your wildest fuckin' nightmares: That one day, down here in Hell's butthole, you'd have guys fighting each other tooth and nail just to get a chance to make you blush and scream. Risking a beating, racking up more time, breaking your damn arms and legs to slow you down, show you who was boss. Courting perjury, injury, DEATH--
     --just so they could call you *theirs*.
    And that voice, again--ever louder. Ever more insistent:
    Beech is who he is, Chris; get over it. And you--you're the guy who busted him up in the first place, inside to out, just 'cause the same fisheyed Nazi bastard who took *both* your cherries told you to.
    Really think you can fuck THAT away? No matter how--
    (desperately)
    --you want to?
    (Faint fuckin' hope.)
    Yeah, I know. But--I can *try*.
    (Assuming I ever get a chance to.)
    So: Three (thankfully) Vern-deprived days, with Schillinger stuck safely away inside the Hole--retching out those meds Dr Nathan's him on, and licking his self-inflicted wounds-- while Keller jerks off every night to the sound of Beech breathing slow down below, and crams the rest of his schedule with endless time-wasting routines. Keeping his dates with Fritz Duchene, who's devolving into a fairly okay drug dealer, then reporting straight back to Ryan O'Reilly, whose hot "secret" affair with Dr Nathan apparently hasn't--strangely enough--destroyed his desire to tear Vern's beloved Aryan Brotherhood down, brick by philosophical brick. And Vern along with it, one can only assume, once he gets released into population again.
     Which makes Chris's continued assault on Beecher's virtue just one more potential nail in the old Nazi's coffin--and O'Reilly, as Keller's only recently begun to realize, a willing collaborator in his matchmaking plans. Beech basically being the one thing of value Vern still  "owns", these days...what with the post office burning down, and all.
     And here the Irishman is now, sprawled in front of the TV bank--looking up, as though by accident, and hitching his chin in Keller's direction. Like: Hey, asshole--that's Cyril comin' down the stairs, right? So where ya think *Beech* is?
     In--our--pod.
     (*Alone*.)
     'Xactly.

A moment or so later, therefore, Beecher sees a shadow darken the pages of his latest legal text--and looks up, frowning. Only to ask, once he realizes who it is:
     "You mind?"
     But Keller--who's leaning, arms crossed in that damnably...lithe way of his, against the pod's open door--seems utterly undeterred by such (apparent) lack of interest. Announcing, in a half-comic whining drawl:
     "I'm bo-o-o-o-red."
     "That's nice," Beecher says. Thinking:
     'Cause *I*'m busy.
     Keller makes a little moue of disappointment.
     "Hey, c'mon, Tobe--work with me here." With an insinuating grin: "I mean, not like you got a DATE for tonight..."
     "Man. You just don't give up, do you?"
     "Nope."
     (All part'a my charm, ToBIas. Or so I been told.)
     "I was just thinkin' we could go down to the gym, or something," he continues. "You do those exercises of yours; I spot ya." Voice dropping to a carnal murmur:  "Hold your...*weights*."
     Punctuating this punchline with a swift brow-waggle--parodic, yet weirdly arousing--and drawing, from Beecher, a snort of equally brief...yet genuine...amusement.
     Beecher: "You really are--"
     Keller, filling in the blank: "--shameless?"
     They look at each other, both not quite smiling. For a moment--just a moment--it's almost like being back at the beginning of this whole twisted mess. Chris clowning for Toby's benefit, tempting the beast of Em City from its chosen cage, gentling him out of one of his fits of rhyme-spewing sarcasm: Hey, Beech, don't let the dipshits get ya down, 'specially that Schillinger cocksucker. You know *I* got your back, huh?
     Wanna go wrestle?
     (...yeah--RIGHT.)
     "Thanks, but no thanks," Beecher tells Keller, coldly. "I kind of need my body left the way it is. Got stuff to *do*."
     And goes right on back to his book.

And: Well, Keller thinks. It's a start. I mean--he's *talking* to me, at least.
     Besides, if Nathan can forgive O'Reilly for getting her old man whacked--far enough to let him slip her the snake, if nothing else--then...
     ...ANYTHING must be possible.

A few days after *that*, meanwhile:

Officially released from Sister Pete's care, Beecher finds himself down in the Gen Pop laundry with Cyril, all smiles and prattle between endless shipments of dirty official Oswald issue shirts, pants, socks, underwear. It's hard work, but bearable--especially for someone who craves exhaustion, distraction, wants to drift through the day in a steamy, detergent-scented dream.
     Because even *that* odor, inextricably linked as it is with flashes of Keller's wicked mouth, eyes, hands, smells better than the reek which boils from the inner landscape of Beecher's own conflicted, aching head.
     As morning slips into early afternoon, however, he's sent off to get a bleach refill and-- not knowing the area--gets almost immediately lost.
     (*Grrrreat.*)
     Pausing to lean on his cane, panting slightly, Beecher hears footsteps approaching from behind--turns to greet their maker--
     --then realizes, heart dropping, it's that lone remaining Vern-loyal Aryan--the guy with the lightning bolt tattooed on his scalp.
     (The...tall--*extremely muscular*--angrily FROWNING guy...with the lightning bolt tattooed on his scalp.)
     "Beecher!" Adding, a second later: "You *bitch*."
     Beecher smiles, straightens. And replies, sweetly:
     "That'd be me."
     Accusing: "Schillinger's in Hole 'cause a' you."
     (Well...in a way, I guess. After all my--*hard work*.)
     But fuck it. And fuck YOU too, fishbelly.
     "Schillinger's in the *Hole* 'cause he tried to knock his Old Man's head in," Beecher returns, coolly. "And I don't remember ever having anything to do with THAT little psychodrama."
     The guy's frown deepens.
     "Think you're pretty smart," he says. "Don'tcha?"
     Beecher, raising an eyebrow:
     "*Comparatively*?"
     The blow--quick, hard, to the stomach--catches him entirely off-guard. Next thing Beecher knows, this dude's hauling him down the hallway in a headlock, half-lead and half-dragged. His head full of roaring noise, lungs decompressed--thinking, dazedly, to himself: Well, this just gets better and better. First rape of the day, potentially, and it's not even someone I *know*.
     (Very well.)
     More footsteps, approaching fast--a clatter of running boots. And Cyril, appearing up ahead, his long blonde hair come loose from its tie like a disordered mane.
     "Toby!" He yells. Then, to Bolt-head Boy: "You leave him *alone*!"
     (--you bad, bad, bad-thing-doing man!)
     Ah, Cyril. Honey-doll.
     Beecher feels his throat constrict further, as the hallway starts to reel around him. Hears the Aryan snap, dimly: "Get lost, retard!"
     And Cyril, lowering his head, fists white-knuckled--mild eyes flaring, suddenly, with the lingering remnants of some *far* less benign personality--just bares his teeth, convulsively. SCREAMING back:
     "NO, *YOOOOOOUUU* GET LOST!"
     A roar of pure bad-ass Irish street rage, so loud *Beecher* cringes.While the Aryan, even more surprised--
     --simply takes off.
     (Good move, man.)
     Beecher drops, head cracking against the floor; groans aloud, curling up. Sees Cyril looming in above him, voice returned to his "normal" hesitant lisp:
     "Sorry for talking bad, Toby."
     Beecher, hoarse: "'Salright."
     "You 'kay?"
     "Oh, yeah...sure."
     And blacks out.

When he wakes again, Ryan's helping Cyril carry him through the infirmary door--past Dr Nathan, the orderly, various surprised staff and patients. And, there in the corner--barely visible, a mere sleek shadow, swishing his mop--
     (--Keller.)
     Cyril dumping him down on a gurney, at Nathan's instructions. Ryan making some kind of face at Keller, smeared past intelligibility by Beecher's myopia: Up to something, obviously. But what?
     Nothing to do with *him*, he hopes...
     (Or: Does he?)
     Well, whatever.
     Beecher leans back, stiffly, sighs into the needle's sting, and lets the painkiller sweep him away. A liquid pool of time, soothing him unconscious; rocking him fast asleep, down where all injuries turn to vague warmth, and there's nothing to guard against but dreams, bad or good, hot or otherwise...
     ...unless you're far too medicated to remember them, that is. The way Beecher's fast becoming, and happy to be so.
     (Just the way he likes it.)

And then, so abruptly it's like some badly-spliced movie jumping from reel to reel, jailhouse epic turning to incipient porno in one quick jerk: Resurfacing, all at once, to find his gurney parked in what looks like a deserted examination room--lights turned low, a screen set up between him and that pesky curtainless window--and his remarkably recovered cock already up and pulsing against the fabric of his pants. While Keller, the chief cause of his discomfort...
     (not that it's all that UNCOMFORTABLE, really)
     ...stares down at him, less predatory (for once) than just plain--intent--from where he lies full-length along Beecher's side, one leg atop his inner thigh...and lightly tracing the outline of Bolt-head Boy's fist as it takes shape--one bruisy finger at a time--on Beecher's mottled abdomen.
     Beecher clears his throat. "Hey."
     Keller: "Hey."
     So...
     (...*now* what?)
     That all-too-familiar hand, probing his wounds with wicked expertise. Trailing up through the detritus Vern's left behind, one barely-consensual encounter after another: Bite-marks on his arms and shoulders, hickeys clustered at the base of his throat like some plague-borne infestation, haematoma thumbprints on his hips and inside both knees.
     Some purple-fresh, on top of the slightly older, brown-and-yellow variety. A litany of ownership, renewed daily.
     Keller touches one, gently. Then points out his own Schillinger-given mementos--the ones still darkening his jaw, limning his proud nose. Flips his shirt-tail up to show Toby where *his* stomach caught the brunt of Vern's "attentions"--a seam of sequestered blood, still tender enough to puff painfully against his waistband whenever he...bends over.
     "Nice, huh?" He says, without any apparent irony. "'S like we--match."
     (Or something.)
     Beecher sighs, again. And voices the old, old question, slowly--not that he expects a markedly different answer from the *last* time he asked it--
     "What do you want, Chris?"

And: Well, what do I *ever* want, Toby?
     (You damn, dim little--LAWYER, you.)
     Keller exhales through his nose, slowly. And replies, aloud:
     "I...want..."
     Searching himself for just the right words, the aptest phrase--some combination of syllables, picked almost at random, to best express this boiling morass he feels welling up inside. This tangled, tangled web binding Toby and him together, tight--and painful--as anything he's ever known before.
     (Four marriages notwithstanding.)
     Desire, and deception. Trust, and treachery.
     Anger. Affection. Hatred. Healing.
     What he owed Vern, from back at Lardner: Obedience for protection, like any other prag, payment required on demand. And what Vern--still *owes*--
     --them both.
    "I want," Keller repeats. And knows, right then--a flash of sudden insight, laundry room-bright, and sweet as that first, booze-flavored taste of Toby's fresh-shaved lips--"to say..."
    (...I'm sorry.)
    Sorry I hurt you.
    Sorry I let you kiss me.
    Sorry I let you *love* me.
    Sorry I--
    (love)
    "Sorry," Chris whispers, softly--*so* softly, it's almost like he's saying it to himself. And hears Beech gasp at the sound of it, ragged and shallow--a half-swallowed sob. Feels his chest pulse under his palm, warm and strong: That patented Beecher flush, familiar as breath, spreading up under the dull gold fleece of belly, ribs, pecs.
     Drawn by the welcoming glow, Keller leans to press his face in the hollow of Toby's throat, inhaling sharply: Smells musk, soap, a whiff of fear. That clean tang, even his *sweat* all milk-fed wholesome, though undercut--just slightly--by a lingering hooch afterscent.
     Chris moans, muffled and moist, smothered by skin. Then gives that throbbing, stubbled Adam's apple a long, hot lick...
     ...and feels Beech's cock jump once, weeping anticipatory precum tears--while his own clenches against his leg in helpless answer, instantly rigid.
     Thinking: Ohhhh, yeah. *Definitely* the right thing to say.
     Even if I really did--
     (--mean it.)

And Beecher, falling back, laid open. Gone limp, his bones like water--all slack and numb and singing with passion in Keller's Judas arms. Unable to gauge whether or not what Chris just said was bullshit. Unable even to CARE.
     His whole body suffused with a single, mantric word--the old Catholic schoolboy's fall-back, whenever things get a little too pleasurable for comfort--
     God. Oh God. Oh God, God, Goddddd...
     (Jesus, Mary and JOSEPH, it's like I'm gonna come right here and now--before he's even *done* anything.)
     Feeling Chris peel his shirt up further, meanwhile, revealing the fresh tattoo over his nipple--still red-black, infected, a constant ache keeping the nub half-erect. And the rush of cool air, making it twitch, sending a thin jolt straight to Beecher's groin: A literally sick thrill, deepening his flush from sun-kissed pink to sun*burn* red.
     "Man," Keller says, shaking his head. "That really is--GROSS."
     Beecher, hoarse: "...thanks a lot."
     Then moaning himself, a second later, harsh and loud--as Keller swoops down, "soothing" the offensive mark with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, tongue laving gently, just shy of an outright suck. No *thin* jolt, this time: More like  thick, surging current, hips dancing as Keller roots between them--
     --pops his fly, pushes down his waistband. Frees his trapped dick, already precum- slick, all stiff and shiny in the examination room's dim glow...
     "Nathan know about this?" Beecher demands, suddenly. Making a *concerted* effort to stay coherent.
     Reaching down further: "...sorta."
     "Uh, ugh--" As Keller thumbs the seam between his straining balls, hefting their delicate weight: "She and Ryan, is there--something--going on? There?"
     "Well...you should maybe ask HIM 'bout that."
     Adding, in Beecher's ear, with an accompanying flick of tongue: "*Later*."
     Their hands, twining. And Chris, kissing his way back down across Beecher's chest, his stomach--pausing slightly to rim Beech's navel, fast and hard--then applying much the same treatment he gave Toby's nipple to the head of his cock, and savoring THAT reaction; the jacknife shudder, the full-body *jerk*.
     While Beecher hears himself groan, croon, bite his tongue against the urge to detonate without warning, as Keller takes him right to the root and gulps like a dying man, mouth tight, jaw working. And liquid, lava-hot pleasure washes up in a wave, drowning every part of him, a tidal rush to climax...
     But: That same damn voice, yammering on with same damn questions, never satisfied-- no matter HOW much internal debate he puts himself through, time and again--
     Ask yourself, Toby. How can you trust him?
     (I *can't*.)
     Then trust THIS, this thing that feels so right--no personality, just flesh. Your body, his body. His body, *on* your body...
     Passive beneath the weight of it, this fierce delight--pinned and splayed, just like he is beneath Chris's own weight. Passive, the way he always seems to end up, eventually--no matter *who*'s on top.
     So how can I trust *that*, either? My body's a traitor. MY body'll respond to anything, anyone, even--
     (Vern)
     And the memory, hot and horrid--a mouthful of bile, full-body retch, a pre-orgasmic spasm:
     (I *always* knew it!)
     Oh, shit, though: What the hell does it matter, then, anyway? If I can feel sorry for Vern--*feel*, for Vern--all bets really are off.
     (Even with Keller.)
     Chris's wicked mouth, those smirking lips, that lying tongue. Teeth ringing his flange, scraping the cord along his underside. His balls, creeping upward.
     And the voice, louder. Colder--
     So DON'T trust him. Just fuck him.
     I mean...
     (...*fuck* him.)
     'Cause--THAT'd be different. Wouldn't it?
     Beecher takes a long, long breath--then takes Keller by the ears, and hauls him loose. Hikes him upward, bodily, surprised by the strength in his own aching sinews; locks eyes, blue on dark. And tells him, firmly:
     "I'm gonna fuck you, Chris."
     That smirk. "*Gonna*?"
     A growl rumbles up through Beecher, so deep it sounds almost (scarily) Vern-like. He thrusts a knee under Keller's hip, and wrestles him over--face-down, the gurney protesting. Bending Keller's arm behind his back and plastering himself full-length along the taller man's spine, forcing those lean thighs apart; grinding himself into Chris's ass, planting his own hot kiss on the back of Chris's neck and biting in, hard enough to wrench the skin. Shaking him like a mother cat shakes her kitten.
     Keller, muffled: "*Shit*, Beech!"
     "Just shut the fuck up," Beecher orders, voice raw. Then: "And take your pants down, too."
     Without wasting time on protests, Keller humps up far enough to unzip, and slides himself free. His shucked pants pool around his calves, trapping him like cloth shackles. Looks painful--not that Beecher gives much of a shit, at this point.
     He's too busy staring, hypnotized, at Keller's naked butt. Never having actually seen one--
     (a guy's, at least)
     --from this angle. And besides--Keller's got one nice-looking ass, all told: Round, firm, vulnerable. Nicer than Beecher's, that's for sure, even *without* the...creative enhancements.
     (Though Vern, he guesses, might possibly disagree.)
     "Use spit," Keller suggests. To which Beecher snaps back:
     "You do NOT get to tell me what to do, Chris."
     (Not *this* time.)
     "Look, I'm just sayin'--you ain't with Vern, that's all. Okay?"
     Fierce: "You think I think I AM?"
     Keller huffs, quietly--and spreads his thighs further, back hollowing. Giving Beecher a highly accomodating view of just where to stick tab A, if he ever gets around to it.
     (Going about this a bit too *slow* for your tastes, Chris?)
     All right.
     Beecher takes himself in hand, milking a fresh stream of precum, and smears it all over --then sets his head against that winking target, and repeats the process. Feeling Keller hump higher, grind back slightly, testing the waters; spreading himself around Beecher's dick until the dilating ring, opening like some flower made of muscle, threatens to swallow him whole.
     Looking back, eyes sultry, over his folded arms. And inquiring, silkily:
     "You gonna wait 'till Nathan comes lookin' for us, or what?"
     "Maybe I won't do it at all, you don't zip it," Beecher retorts--half-trapped, already, and considerably more than half-shocked by the sheer *heat* of Keller's insides, lapping at him like some tiny, toothless mouth--
     But: "YES you fuckin' well will," Keller purrs back. And reaches around with both hands, too quick for Beecher to react, PULLING him in by the hips.
     Forcing Beecher's cock deep inside him, with an ease that makes him cry out aloud: So hot, so tight, so alien. So--
     (Holy *Christ*!)
    --aMAzing.
    (If this is what Vern feels...)
    But you don't want to go *anywhere* near that one, really. Do you, Tobias?
    Chris's words from their pas-de-deux in Sister Pete's office returning, meanwhile, like a landslide:
    *YOU, Toby-baby, would abso-fuckin'-lutely *love* it.*
    And Beecher, thinking, in disbelieving response: Oh, Keller. Oh *Chris*, you, *you*--
    (--you are SO right.)

Jammed together now, and falling face-first into a rhythm older than time--Beecher ostensibly doing the *fucking* but Keller most definitely setting the pace, continually forcing Beecher to ride him further, faster, harder. And both of them grunting, gasping, gaping wide and whining,whimpering, wailing with the building ecstasy of it all--Toby into Chris's shoulder, Chris into his own bicep; Beecher plumbing Keller's depths, hitting his spot, while Keller plays squeeze and release on Beecher's sore, swollen, close-to-splitting dick--until--*until*--UNTIL--
     (--uuuaaaAAA*AAAGGGGHHH*--)

--they collapse, Beecher hugging onto Keller for dear life, spewing deep as Chris grinds to his own release on the sweat-slick steel beneath them both. And panting, heart a jazz drum solo taken to its most illogical extreme, thumping through Keller's back and into his own chest like some double image made flesh...
     A long, long pause. Into which Keller eventually says, with real admiration:
     "Wow. I guess you really CAN fuck a guy's brains out."
     Another pause. And then--
     --Keller feels Beecher, still lodged on top (and partially inside) of him, begin to shudder. No noise, no words--just few hot drops on the back of his neck. A general...trembling.
     And Keller, wondering: *Is* he? Could he actually be--
     (--crying?)
     Reaching back again--gently, this time. Taking hold of Beecher's gold-furred arms, and  locking them tight around himself. As he whispers:
    "Oh, baby, sssh. It's all right, baby. I'm here."
    Beecher snuffling, hot face buried between Chris's shoulderblades. And Chris, not letting go--just locking Beech's square little hands in his, forming fists against the world, continuing to comfort him: Oh, sssh, sssh. Sssh.
    (Toby. *Baby*. It's all right, now.)
    Gonna be ALL RIGHT, no matter what. Because--
    (--I'm here.)

Afterward, both replete, practically levitating. They drifting through the rest of the day, barely speaking, barely touching. Not *needing* to.
     And then, after lockdown--Beecher's at the sink, reaching for the toothpaste, when Chris's hand suddenly appears on his: Dark on light, fingers encircling his wrist firmly, a pair of flesh handcuffs--
     --and they fall on each other, kissing hard, both equally shameless now: Humped up against the back wall of the pod with everyone within range watching, out there in the darkness--all those prying eyes, avid, amazed. Aroused, some of them; some disgusted. Or *amused*.
     Beecher and Keller, however, being far past caring. At ALL.
     Later, lying together on the bottom bunk--one eye kept out for hacks, even as Chris's hands roam possessively all over Beecher's wrung-out body--Toby murmurs, quiet, into his ear:
     "Chris--"
     "Uh huh?"
     A pause. Then: "Nothing."
     And Keller folds him closer, marvelling at the beat of his breath, the pulse at his throat. That scratchy gilt hair. That *smell*.
     All his, make no mistake--and consensually, too. For now, at least.
     (But: If Vern was here...)
     Yeah, yeah. And if things were different, they wouldn't be the same; and if my aunt had nuts, she'd be my uncle. Point is, he's NOT here...not for a long, long time to come. And then--
     --well. Then...we'll just have to see.

As Beecher tucks his head into the space between Keller's jaw and shoulder, curling around him like a cat, or a fetus, or a fetal cat. Thinking:
     This thing with Keller, the culmination of all that explosive sexual tension...when all's said and done, though it still gets (and keeps) Beecher harder than he's ever been, it remains a distraction, nothing more. Not so much different from getting blind drunk to avoid thinking about Vern--
     (No. But it sure does beat the hangover.)
     And it'll help him WORK.
     Because--he really *did* love Keller, once upon a time. But now--he just doesn't.
     (And never will again.)
     Luck of the draw, Beecher guesses; a professional hazard, proved once again. When Keller told him he loved him too, he believed it as gospel. And when Keller refuted that claim--in the gym, his arm around Vern, best buddies laughing hard at Beecher's expense--well, that was when Beecher lost his newfound faith...and he hasn't regained it since.
     (Not that he's been *looking* all that awfully hard, mind you.)
     Simple, animal pleasure: A cheap and perfect method of stress relief for Beecher to rely on, long as it doesn't interfere with his agreed-upon plans for revenge and retribution. But Chris, poor bastard--Chris--
     --actually thinks it means something more. Or wants to, at least.
     (Very, very badly.)
     Which, in a way, Beecher guesses--
     --is the best revenge he ever could have wanted.

This, then, is how Beecher and Keller pass their time together, what little time they have left: Almost one month, exactly, to Ryan O'Reilly's personal D-Day--or V-Day, to be more accurate. The day Vern Schillinger finally gets out of the Hole, and everything-- everywhere--for everyone involved...
     ...falls apart, within a matter of hours, like a glass pinata stuffed full of shit.

End Part 9/2
 

MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE, Part 10

Archive: Yes, please--at Em City, linked through Beecher, Schillinger, Keller, Fresh Meat, Clicked Up, my name at Poet's Corner.
Warnings: Angst, language, violence, and--*SPOILER*--character death.
A fervent plea: I'm not beautiful, so don't hate me--and besides, none of this actually happens, at least in terms of the SHOW. That we know of.

This, then, is how it all goes down: A month in the Hole, followed by release back into Gen Pop; the last temptation of Vernon Schillinger, rejoined already in progress.
     Self-crucifixion, Aryan Brotherhood style--one final chance to prove, publicly, that he does *not* actually have "loser" written all over him, plain as the fresh new growth of hair on his unshaved head. To break this Goddamn downward cycle he seems stuck in, once and for all--
     (--or die trying.)
     He hears a key in the lock, now--a whole day early--and rises to greet his chosen escorts: C.O. Karl Metzger himself, Vern's former co-conspirator, backed up by that nigger hack who got kicked in the head during that whole visitor's room meltdown fiasco. The latter glaring sidelong, his expression reminding Vern irresistibly of the similarly--shall we say, NON-melanin-challenged--cop who got his ass thrown in Lardner: Same guy took one look at Vern's tats, and decided a righteous bar brawl over whether or not some Mick/Wop/Spic/WhatEVER motherfucker had stepped to him wrong suddenly seemed more like a fuckin' *hate* crime.
    Only REAL case of reverse discrimination Vern'd ever come across, right there, not that anyone involved would ever admit it: Two whole extra years tacked on for wearing your ideals on your arm, where everybody can see, 'stead of hiding them under your shirt like a *good* little closet Nazi. Like some other people Vern could mention.
    (Case in point...)
    ...Metzger, who steadfastly refuses even to meet Schillinger's (one good) eye--afraid of being *contaminated*, maybe. Him having to report back to Fritz Duchene, after all--Vern's old protege, now lording it over the rest of Em City's swastika brigade...talk about an all-too-visible sign of SERIOUS downward motion.
     So how's it feel, Karl? Having to set up some degenerate, dumb-ass little white-boy wannabe gangsta as your glorious racial separatist crusade's figurehead, just 'cause there's no one else left to fit the bill?
     (You cow-brained, shit-spined, barn-sized son of a bitch.)
     Ignoring Metzger, Vern dresses quickly, ticking down the various items on his latest mental list. On the plus side, he's finally detoxed from Dr Nathan's drugs, brain once more blessedly clear and running on pain alone, the best kind of fuel; on the minus, however, this clarity only makes it all the more obvious just how far everything around him has fallen to crap.
     No post office. No tract distribution system. Duchene, that idiot's idiot, dragging the whole A.B. to Hell in a handbasket right along with him; Ryan O'Reilly breathing hard down *all* of their backs, and working his revenge with the same effort Duchene usually keeps reserved strictly for either kissing ass or jerking off. Besides which--
     ...where the hell are these cocksuckers *taking* him, anyway? He didn't know better, he'd think it was--
     --Warden Glynn's office.
     (Well. And isn't this just...precious.)
     Glynn behind the desk, trying to look all IMPORTANT, while McManus lurks by the window. And barking, without preamble, as Vern walks in--
     "We got shipments of heroin have been coming into Em City, Schillinger--much larger than normal, and *way* too pure. Tim's had seven overdoses already."
     "Yeah?" Vern jerks his head in McManus's direction. "Surprised he's still up and kicking."
     "PRISONER overdoses."
     "Huh, 'course." A pause. "So?"
     Glynn looks at McManus. Who says--
     "The Mafia bring it in, through Nappa these days; we've known for years, though we've never been able to prove it. Now, however--we have reason to suspect that the distribution end may have been taken over by *your* boys."
     Jan and *Cory*? Vern's mind spasms, momentarily. Then, connecting the dots: Ohhh. YOU mean--
     (--the *Brotherhood*.)
     The revelation hitting him fist-first, a low blow straight to the gut: DUCHENE, that fuckin' motherFUCKER. Even as he snaps back, automatically:
     "The HELL you say?"
     McManus, to Glynn: "See? I told you he wouldn't know anything."
     Glynn sighs. "Yeah. You did."
     (Oh, and just talk about me like I'm not even *here*, why don't you.)
     Vern feels his bad hand clench, HARD; looks over at Metzger, who now seems to be making a fairly serious study of the planet Mars. Catches the nigger's gaze instead, practically snickering at him behind his palm, and finds himself lit from within by a sudden stab of rage so strong it threatens to turn him inside-fuckin'-*out*.
     Forcing himself to transfer his attention back to Glynn and McManus, therefore, before he does something he regrets--something that'll get him slung right back in the Hole, after a  mere ten minutes of "freedom". And saying, carefully:
     "Aryans...do *not* push drugs."
     "Not YOUR Aryans."
     This from McManus, deceptively mild--that semi-retard look of his in full effect. Like, hey: Nothing personal, right? Just stating the obvious.
     'Cause--you are *not* king White Power shit around here, anymore, Vernon. As we--
     (both)
     --know.
     That rage again, gripping him and shaking, an invisible, full-body fist. McManus's face haloed in corneal scar, leaking light; reduced, if Vern squints just right, to a mere smeary caricature: Bald, bearded, peering. Meaningless.
     But: *Stop* that, Vern tells himself, firmly. Knowing he'll probably need every ounce of objectivity he can muster, one way or another, before today is through.
     One way, yeah. Or--
     (--another.)
     "All right, Schillinger," Glynn says, finally. "You can go."
     Vern: "Now, hold on just a--"
     "I *said*, you can GO."
     So--go, already.
     (You over-the-hill, flabby, one step up--and maybe not even THAT much, anymore--from an outright fuckin' faggot...*loser*.)
     Vern draws himself up, full height. Returning, frostily: "My pleasure."
     And slams from the office, the black hack trailing him, stalking away towards the Gen Pop showers. While Metzger turns and takes off, with uncharacteristically brisk stride--
     --in the opposite direction.

Down in the kitchen, meanwhile--inside the same supply closet where Peter Schibetta and Adebisi once did *their* dance, before being hauled off to Ad Seg and the Hole, respectively--
     --Ryan O'Reilly hoists Dr Nathan onto him by her hips,  provoking a gasp which runs through them both like a cracked whip. Amazed she's actually *here*, down in HIS domain--this echoing steel tank, crammed full of canned goods and boxes of plastic cutlery, where even the walls smell of garbage, ratshit and rancid margarine. And equally amazed, to be frank, that she's here--
     (with him, on him...actually letting him *inside* of her, let alone--apparently--enjoying the experience...)
     --at ALL.
     Feeling her internal muscles clamp down on him, like wet, raw silk. Feeling her tongue trace his scar, and groaning aloud--as he whispers, helpless:
     "Oh, Gloria..."
     (angel)
     And: Everything leading up to this one, perfect moment just--boils away, all at once, like a sudden gush of steam. A bath for the soul, leaving him all pink and peeled and naked inside--emptied out, scoured clean...
     ...for the moment, at least.
     While Nathan pauses too, panting, wracked by her own set of uncontrollable pleasure-shudders. Studying O'Reilly's face in extreme close-up, as the hand with the bleeding shamrock tattoo strokes the sweaty small of her back, cupping her tight; watching a film of pleasure pass across those narrow, snake-green eyes, render them momentarily harmless, calm, quiet. Almost...innocent.
     (Almost.)
     But then the film lifts, separates--reveals the devious brain beneath, already revving inevitably back up to speed. Plotting, planning, slipping and sliding. Manipulating allies and enemies alike like pieces on some mental gameboard: Em City, the home version. Fun for the whole family!
     (*Especially* ones containing brain-damaged, highly suggestible little brothers, all too innocently willing to shore up their Machiavellian elder siblings' psychotic romantic attachments through carjacking, kidnapping, MURDER...)
     Staring deep into those eyes of his, Nathan would swear to God she can actually see O'Reilly filing the orgasm he just had away for further reference, while simultaneously projecting it into the future--already thinking about their next kiss, their next tryst, their next half-desperate coupling. A sick, all-consuming flood of desire, made all the sweeter both by constant threat of discovery and its own basic--yet pretty well complete--implausibility.
     Because: Just *look* at me, Ryan. And then...
     ...look at YOU.
     You ever try and spread *this* story around, after the fact, and whose version is everyone going to be MORE likely to believe? Really?
     Kissing her neck, now, and peppering her cinnamon-colored cleavage with tiny bee-sting flicks--oh, the sweet, moist trace of those thin lips, that mobile mouth.
     She can feel him smiling into her breasts, breath slowing, pulse returning to normal. Can practically HEAR him thinking it: Next time. And the next. And the *next*...
     As Nathan thinks back, coldly:
     But--there isn't going to BE a next time, Ryan. Not ever again.
     (For either of us.)

And at the same time, in Gen Pop--Vern emerges from the shower, all freshly bald and buttoned-down, to find what looks like the entire A.B. roll-call (minus Duchene, who's rendered conspicuous by his very absence) lurking hesitantly around his cell door: Eyes downcast, arms crossed. Avoiding his gaze.
     (Oh, yeah--JUST what I needed.)
     Vern leans back a touch, taking up his old soldier's stance: At ease, but watchful. Draws a long, relaxing breath. And asks, voice dropping--instinctively--to its lowest, most authoritarian register--
     "This the 'welcome back' wagon, fellas? Or are you all just--happy to see me?"
     I mean--
     (--didn't know you *cared*.)
     More shuffling ensues, along with a seemingly endless silence--until ol' bolt-scalped Luke Gorman, never one to fuck around, begins:
     "Vern...we, uh--took a vote..."
     A fuckin' VOTE.
     (And when the fuck did THIS become a democracy, exactly?)
     Schillinger nods, slightly. And replies:
     "So you're--what? Throwing me out?"
     (Throwing *me* out. Of the--Aryan Brotherhood.)
     ME.
     (Like that could ever even *happen*.)
     Feeling a reckless sort of glee bubble up from deep inside--a reeling, giddy pain, worse (by far) than glass in his eye, or anything his hand ever produced. Worse than getting your balls kicked and your face shit on, in public, by some guy you thought was too much of a natural whore to even bother worrying over.
     Tobias Beecher, your bitch-turned-"boyfriend"--that soft, overeducated, drunk-driving little Yuppie party favor--who worked his way back into your good graces, even after you got Chris Keller to *cripple* his pretty little ass, then topped you from below in front of the whole damn jail. Your property. Your enemy. Your...
     (...*wife*.)
     And where IS Beecher, anyway? Off helping Duchene sell drugs? Or...
     (...sucking--Keller's--dick?)
     An incipient howl, marrow-buried, runs up and down Vern's body like a current; makes his hand sing, his bad eye dull and skew. His face--TWITCH.
     With Luke noticing, though trying not to. And adding, hastily--
     "I mean, nothin' personal, man. Just--you know..."
     ...you're a liability.
     ...a loose cannon.
     ...got more enemies than every other career bad-ass in Oz combined, which can't HELP but rub off on the rest of us. Eventually.
     And to top it all off...
     (...you're a fuckin' faggot.)
     The same old song, again and again. The same damn word, always in his Old Man's jeering voice. He heard back in the Hole, mirroring his every thought; heard it when he felt that phantom hand on the back of his neck, and remembered--
     (--*remembered*--)
     Thinking: So what are you gonna do, guys? Revoke my *membership*? Take away my keys to the neo-Nazi clubhouse? Gonna strike my name from the register, take me off all the mailing lists, and make sure I can never shave my head in public again?
     (...and ohhhh my sweet Lord Jesus Christ, I really AM startin' to lose it...)
     But: *Not* *right* *now*.
     So okay--let's make a new list, how 'bout that? Item one: Get done with this bullshit. Two: Find Duchene, and tear him a new asshole. Three: Find Beecher. And--
     (--Keller. Maybe.)
     And *then*...
     Vern puts his head down, exhaling sharp through his nose: That HUFF they all know so well. The calm before the charge.
     "Luke."
     Gorman: "Yeah, Vern?"
     Another pause--followed, soon enough, by a truly disturbing smile: Wide, bright, pleasant. Sort of like your Dad might give, if he was contemplating cannibalism...or incest.
     "Your *vote*," Vern says, with deceptive sweetness, "can suck my fuckin' dick. 'Cause I QUIT."
     Adding, as the men around him gape:
     "And if the rest of you back-stabbing, drug-dealing, jizzball race traitor pussies don't like it--then I think you all know where to find me."
     (Assuming you actually got the STONES to want to do anything about it, that is.)

A moment or so later, after Vern's safely long gone, the crowd gives a general sigh: Posturing and bravado, crossbred with a definite undertone of relief at not being forced to confront their former leader directly.
     (As yet.)
     One of the other Aryans, to Gorman: "Think you should'a told him about Beecher?"
     Gorman shoots him a look. And growls--
     "*You* wanna tell him, go ahead and do it, shit-for-brains. I fuckin' DARE ya."

Meanwhile, in the Laundry:
     "Where ya goin', Toby?" Cyril O'Reilly asks, plaintively.
     Beecher, reminding him: "Bleach?"
     "Oh, yeah." A pause. "Back soon, right?"
     "Absolutely," Beecher replies, unslinging his cane from a nearby steam-pipe. And limps off, quickly--
     --in the direction of the infirmary.

And up on the Em City deck--where "Mole" Busmalis, still on half-days while his small intestine recuperates from being multiply perforated during last month's mini-riot, is already laying out the checkerboard in anticipation of Bob Rebadow's return from work--
     --Metzger finds O'Reilly, lurking (and sneaking a quick cigarette) near Keller and Beecher's pod, and taking the opportunity to thumb through Beecher's notes for Cyril's appeal as he does so.
     Announcing, as Metzger's shadow engulfs his: "Man, you ever see this much legalese in one place?" A long drag. "Shit barely looks like English, *that*'s for fuckin' sure."
     Metzger: "There's no smoking in Em City, O'Reilly."
     O'Reilly licks two fingers, tamps the offending butt. And drawls: "Riiiiight. No smoking, no fucking, no fighting...*definitely* no lookin' the other way while Duchene sells the brothaz enough dope to keep 'em sedated, just so's you two can perpetuate the Master Race in peace..."
     "Shut up." As the Irishman smirks: "Schillinger's back, by the way."
     "Not 'till tomorrow."
     "Yeah, well, Glynn had questions; let him out early."
     O'Reilly, rising: "He go after Beecher?"
     The giant hack shrugs. "What else?"
     But Ryan's already on the move, notes discarded, gesturing for Metzger to follow--which he does, reluctantly. Thinking:
     Way people bend over backwards to protect that little hooker, it's like his pasty lawyer ass shits gold bricks, or something...
     Not that O'Reilly takes quite the same *type* of interest in Beecher that Vern does, of course. A simple business investment there, far as Metzger can work out: Just needs Beecher kept alive--and in full working order--so he can get that retard brother of his off his back. And while Metzger can't quite sympathize (since, in his opinion, all mental cases should just be given a mercy shot straight to the back of the skull), he DOES understand.
     "You don't even know where he IS, O'Reilly," he points out, as they reach the hallway. But Ryan doesn't slow--just throws back, over his shoulder:
     "Nope. But where's the first place you think he's gonna look?"

...Sister Peter Marie's office. Where, even as Metzger and O'Reilly speak, Vern has just thrown open the door to reveal--
     --some guy he's never seen before--some fuckin' BLACK guy, to boot--goggling up at him from Beecher's chair.
     "Hey, man," the guy blurts. "Ain't you that Schillinger motherfucker?"
     (Well, I guess SO.)
     Staring at the guy, panting slightly. Who explains, helpfully--
     "You lookin' for Beecher, dude got transferred, 'bout a month back; works down in the laundry, slingin' shirts with O'Reilly--the dumb one, you dig?" As Vern turns: "But he ain't gonna be in there *now*."
     Turning back: "And why not?"
     The guy snorts. "Man, you just don't know shit around here anymore, do you?"
     Vern feels his hands fist. And rumbles, dangerously quiet:
     "Nigger...I'm in NO MOOD."
     A cold wave of hate crashing up against Replacement Boy's cheerful 'tude, crushing it flat. The guy bristles, momentarily, like he wants to respond in kind--then notices Vern's eyes, and thinks better of it. Offering, instead:
     "'S in the infirmary." Adding: "Always *is*, this time a' day."
     "Somebody beat him up?"
     Obviously hedging: "Not...exactly."
     (Man, I really SHOULD have been a fuckin' dentist.)
     Vern leans forward, shoulders bunched with effort. And asks--both slowly *and* clearly--
     "Then what...the fuck...is in...the infirmary?"
     Thinking, to himself: If you say what I *think* you're gonna say...
     (I--do not know WHAT I'll do. Really.)
     A brief, breathless pause ensues. Into which the guy, equally clear, replies:

 "...Keller."

And Vern--takes off, surprisingly fast for all his bulk. Flat-out *running.*

Halfway down the hall behind him, O'Reilly and Metzger catch just a flash of movement--the back of Vern's shirt, going around the corner. As, behind *them*, an all-too-familiar voice calls out:
     "O'Reilly!"
     (McManus.)
     Ryan turns, not bothering to look at Metzger--who drifts off, eerily quick and silent as ever. Heading for the infirmary, where Gloria...
     (my angel)
     ... should already be re-ensconced. But--isn't. 'Cause--
     (the *fuck*?)
     --there she is, right now. Standing by McManus's side.
     McManus, frowning, his lips pursed under that straggly little goatee of his. Trying hard to front, like usual, and--again, like usual--getting exactly nowhere: Eyefucking Ryan the way a drunk first-timer busts cherry, while Ryan's own eyes stay helplessly locked on Gloria's--
     --Dr Nathan's--
     --utterly unsmiling, unwelcoming, UN-familiar face.
     So startlingly different from the woman he was just--*with*, a scant half-hour previous--it's like some badly-made human skin mask: A portrait drawn by Cyril, in crayon, with one hand tied behind his back.
     Trying, silently, to raise some spark of recognition from her liquid black gaze, some tiny acknowledgement of who he is, WHAT he is...to her...
     (Guy who *loves* you, angel. Who'd die for you--KILL for you--)
     Would. And did. And would again, you only cared to ask.
     (In a New York fuckin' minute.)
     Plan at risk, Ryan, he reminds himself, desperately trying to force his mind back onto the topic at hand. Five months of work, possibly washing away down the drain RIGHT NOW, even as we speak: All those under-the-table deals with Keller, and Duchene, and Metzger. And--
     (Beecher)
     While Schillinger plummets straight into the middle of this minefield Ryan's labored so long and hard to create, primed and ready to blow--with nothing to contain his potentially deadly impact but Metzger. Who can *not* be trusted, any more than anyone else can be, unsurpervised. Not when you're the Lord of the fuckin' Dance.
     But: Trying--and failing. Just like he's failing here, with her...while McManus repeats, from somewhere very far away indeed...
     "O'Reilly--I've cautioned her against this, but...Dr Nathan has something she wants to tell you."
     Ryan, hoarse: "...uh huh?"
     Cut to--

--the infirmary: That same examination room, behind their usual screen. Where Beecher, already primed for Keller's approach, hears noise from behind. And turns, smiling--
     --to find Vern, instead. RIGHT THERE.
     *Staring* at him.
     Clean-shaved and close-cropped, his dull gold hair almost sleek: Beecher's got what must be a new pair of glasses on, dimming his myopic blue eyes back down to normal. And looking, for all the world...well...
     Sane. Stable. RESPECTable. Happy, even.
     (And--)
     --so much like Rachel, frankly, it makes Vern's teeth hurt just to see him.
     Beecher, hoarse: "Thought you--weren't back 'till tomorrow."
     "Yeah," Vern says. "Me too."
     And grabs Beecher by the shoulders, crushing their bodies together. KISSING him passionately, right on the mouth: All hot tongue, wet lips, devouring teeth. A wild, desperate, breathless kiss, filled with emotions far too deep and conflicted to sort, let alone translate.
     While Beecher--too stunned to do much more than fold, automatically, into the older man's tight embrace--feels himself rouse, nevertheless, in a way he's never done before...with Vern, at least. Not even--
     (that one time)
     Making an inarticulate sound--half-growl, half-sob--into Beecher's mouth. And then just--
     --letting him go.
     They stare each other down, still winded. 'Till Vern, at last, gets enough breath back to speak. And says, carefully--his eyes kept tight on Beecher's face--
     "You...cheating. *Fucking*. LITTLE. *CUNT.*"
     (Oh--crap.)
     Beecher opens his mouth, perhaps to explain--or *try*, at least--just as Vern hauls off, and punches him full in the face.
     (WHOMP!)
     Neck-crack, sharp, to the left; Beecher's glasses fly off, hit the wall, splinter on impact. The sound's like a gunshot in this tiny room: Glass sprays, narrowly missing them both.
     Vern, toneless: "Oops."
     And: "You," Beecher says, through a mouthful of blood.
     Spitting on the floor between them, bright red. And repeating, louder:
     "...*you* fuck, fuuuck..."
     ...rising to a scream, now--so long-deferred, it sounds like a whole WORLD of self-inflicted misery splitting apart at once--
     "--fucking, *fucking*, FUCKING *FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOU*!"
     Then hauls off himself, finally--and hits Vern *back*.

Back outside Sister Pete's:
     "We won't be seeing each other again, O'Reilly," Dr Nathan tells Ryan, slowly, under McManus's wary gaze. "Because--"
     (--I've put in my request for a transfer.)
     Like telepathy. Like osmosis. Like he can't even remember hearing the words--just feeling them. Feeling them in his blood, his bones--his heart, so suddenly cold, a ticking frozen bomb--
     Wanting to puke, chemo-hard. Wanting to fall down and die, right there in front of McManus, in front of Oz. In front of the whole fuckin' world.
     "I put it in," she continues, eyes on his. "A month back. And--"
     (A month back.)
     Back in the infirmary, behind the screen. Back THEN.
     *Ryan...we have to talk.*
     "--they granted it."
     And: Oh my God, he thinks, so far beyond amazement that it isn't even funny. Holy Jesus fuck. O'Reilly, baby--
     (--YOU got *played*.)
     Not knowing who he's angrier at--her, or himself, for falling for it. The liar king, the great manipulator, manipulATED to a fuckin' fault--a fault-line, a crevasse, a crack to the centre of the world. One-way elevator to Hell, goin' *DOWN*!
     All pain, and rage, and misery, everywhere he looks. No light, no hope. No--
     (love)
     --fuckin' nothing.
     Straight down, into the dark: Down into Oz itself, surely the beating fucking HEART of darkness. That black heart, where he now knows--parole in twelve, fifteen, twenty-five, *fifty* or not--that he WILL stay now, entombed, alone and unmourned...
     (...forever.)

Meanwhile, in the infirmary:
     Vern's nose squishes flat under Beecher's fist with a satisfying, carteliginous *crack*,  blood gouting down onto his upper lip--as Toby pauses, amazed by his own actions; hugs his bruised knuckles to him, and watches Vern touch the blood, gently. Dab it from his lip.
     Smell it. *Taste* it.
     With Beecher thinking all the while, to himself...wreathed in a certain unearthly calm...
     ...and now--he IS going to have to kill me.
     (For real, this time.)
     Vern looks at him, eyes narrowed. Confirming:
     "You know I'm gonna *kill* you for that."
     (Like I shoulda that time, in the gym...)
     Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just figure that one out, huh?
     Beecher's scalp prickles, hair beginning to rise. As Vern continues, conversationally gentle:
     "And you know what else, sweetpea?" A pause. "I'm gonna *ENJOY* it."
     A shot of pure adrenaline, straight to the medulla oblongata: Beecher feels his patented berserker side, absent for so blessedly long, take over completely. Lets his lips draw back, showing teeth. And snarls, *grinning*--jolted by a snatch of memory, some half-lost teenage fantasy of rabid rage and righteous self-immolation--
    (*One of these days, I'll run wild, like a mad dog. They'll have to PUT ME DOWN.*)
    "--yeah? Well, don't just *TALK* about it."
    (PRAG.)

Outside Sister Pete's:
     "Guess that makes this goodbye," Ryan says.
     Dr Nathan: "That's right."
     (Well...okay.)
     Under the harsh lights of Oz, trapped equally between the weight of the windowless walls on either side of him and McManus's unforgiving, misunderstanding, stupid-ass stare--Ryan O'Reilly looks his one true love in the face, for what he knows will be the last time ever. Forces himself to smile, wide and thin: A crooked blade, slashed deep across his own--already bleeding--heart. And replies--
    "Then...'bye."
    And walks away, hips swinging, like she means nothing to him--leaving them... both...behind. Along with what's left--
     (and that ain't much, angel baby)
     --of his soul.

Slouching around the corner, out of range--then taking off too, faster than Vern'll *ever* move, like he's trying to outrun his own pain. Heading for:

The infirmary. Where--
     --with a roar, Vern *leaps* at  Beecher--who recoils, shoving the screen between them, and grabbing for his cane. Whacking Vern across the face with it, once, twice, as the screen goes flying. Only to overbalance, at which point Vern grabs him by the hair--and Beecher twists in his arms, scalp ripping, to latch onto Vern's bad arm with his teeth.
     Vern cursing, in surprised pain: "Aw, FUCK, you--"
     (fuckin' *bitch*)
     Slamming him--face-first, several times--into the nearest wall, 'till Beecher's grip slackens, and he's able to pry him free. Kneeing him in the stomach, then throwing him back up against the wall again, leaving a splotch; pressing against him from behind, arm-locked. And feeling himself twitch half-hard, jerk up like *steel* against Beecher's ass as the blond man kicks, spits, hisses, drools blood--virtually DARING him to finish off the job, before he gets another chance to fight back: What are you, cupcake, getting *soft*?
     In his ear, harsh: "This what you wanted? Huh? This what gets you hot?"
     Beecher grits his teeth. "You...tell ME if I seem aroused."
     "Oh, you're pretty good at fakin' it by now, I bet--"
     "Yeah, well; learned from the best."
     Spinning him, then shoving him wide, pinned and still struggling. Accusing:
     "You been fuckin' Keller--"
     "Really are kinda *obsessed* on that subject, aren't'cha?" Nose to nose, snarling back: "That what happened with your WIFE?"
     Vern punches him in the stomach, then the rib-cage; hears something crack as Beecher doubles up, sobbing with rage. Then leans in, and whispers--
     (--but--)
     "You said you hated him."
     (you *slut*)
     Almost to himself, less a growl that--almost--a WHINE, or something. Makes him more than a little sick to hear it coming out of his own mouth: A weird, thin crack in his voice, like it's turning inward, stretched beyond its limits. Like it's just about to--
     (--break.)
    The same tone he used while beating Rachel, that first time--a mourning, baffled keen. Like: See what you *do* to me, you whore? What you--
     (make)
     --me do?
    Beecher hacks, gulping; spits blood again. "Guess I *lied*, then, dumbshit. 'Cause I do it with him daily, anywhere, everywhere--" Concluding, vicious: "--*every single chance I GET*."
     Slapping him down to the ground, then--kicking him again and seeing him curl up further, huging himself. And pausing, lost inside the coils of memory, paralyzed by patterns--horrified, one last time, by his own sheer *predictability*, and everything it implies about him: All those things he'd rather forget about himself--or not know at all.
     As Beecher gathers his breath, a wealth of contempt in every line of his half-rebroken body. And adds, through crimson teeth:
    "...'sides...I a'ways--hated YOU."
    (And *that* never made much of a difference, now...did it?)
    To which Vern makes an awful, growling sound, tearing up from inside, and goes to STOMP right on Beecher's upturned, mocking, cat-flat face--
    "HEY!"
     --only to find the examination room doorway suddenly full of people he knows: Duchene, Keller. Metzger lurking behind, just--
     (watching)
     Oh, and doesn't THAT look familiar. 'Cause you're *his* angel now, right, Karl? Fucking Duchene--
     But: No. 'Cause Duchene's hanging back too, just a tad. Meaning the REAL bad-ass in the room, supposedly, must be--
     (Fucking *KELLER*.)
     Behind him, Beecher claws his way back up the wall, supporting himself on shaky legs; catches Chris's eye over Vern's shoulder, and throws him a *look* that makes Vern's hand, his eye, that suppurating fresh new human bite on his forearm CLENCH all at one, needle-bright: An icepick stab, straight to the--
     (heart)
     While Chris, lounging there in the doorway, just *can't* resist the urge to taunt. Like the fuckin' little bitch on heat he really is. The unspoken implication: *Told* ya I was the key, now, didn't I?
     (Sweetpea.)
     Murmuring, eyebrows raised: "So what, Vern--you *jealous*? Like you LOVE him, or somethin'? Want him to--"
     (love)
     --you?
     (No. *Never*. Never EVER.)
     Not even if she begged me, pleaded--crawled back to me on hands and fuckin' knees--
     (--HE, you mean.)
     You mean *he*. Beecher.
     (Not Rachel.)
     Yeah--'course.
     And, Keller, adding, with an extra little curl of those--wicked, WICKED lips--
     "Kinda *faggy*, for a straight, married man like yourself. Ain't it?"

(UhrrraaaAAAA*AAAHHH*--)

Outside, through the infirmary's inner windows, Metzger spots O'Reilly exploding up out of the stairwell--as, inside, Vern CHARGES while Keller dodges, trapping the bulkier man's arm under his. Duchene drawing a shank, meanwhile--
     (the hell did he get *that*?)
     --and ripping Vern across the side with it, shallowly.
     (Jesus FUCK!)
     With Vern roaring, Keller laughing, Duchene staring dumbly at the stains on his hands--
     (--never did nobody hand-to-hand before, huh, Fritz? You fuckin' dilletante.)
     Keller wrenching hard at his rotator cuff, wrestling him around; Vern yelling again, in sharp pain, as his wound opens further. But he exhilaration of finally getting the upper hand--in front of *Beecher*, no less--has made Chris overconfident--
     (no surprise THERE)
     So: Before he can react, Vern's already  spun *him*  into a choke-hold, bent half-double--and rammed him, DEEP, onto Duchene's unsuspecting blade.
     Beecher: "Chris!"
     O'Reilly, to Metzger: "*What*?"
     Fritz: "Oh...SHIT."
     And Vern, smiling to himself: Not too bad at all, huh, motherfuckers?
     (For an OLD MAN.)
     Keller coughing blood now, to match Beecher's. As Vern turns him, hoisting him bodily, using the shank like a meathook: Licks back and forth across Keller's stunned-silent mouth, trap-snap-quick, using the blood like lipstick--and hisses into him, eerily breathy:
    "Who's the fag now...*faggot*?"
     Then TWISTS him bodily upward, zigging the shank jaggedly through his abdominal muscle-wall, and shoves him back into Beecher's horrified arms--intestines spilling free, in one visceral gush, as they fall in a heap, tangled together.
     Metzger, atypically amazed: "*Whoah* nellie."
     O'Reilly, right behind him now: "WHAT?"
     While Beecher presses his hands fast to Keller's wounds, already wrist-deep in gore but trying to stay calm--*assuring* Chris, over and over--
     "Be okay. Be alright. Oh, baby, be *okay*, be--"
     Vern, unimpressed: "He's DEAD, you dizzy 'ho."
     Keller flopping between them, eyes rolled up and twitching: Mere autonomic function gone wild, a meat-bag shaken by spasms. As Vern tweezes the shank from Duchene's grip, one-handed--so QUICK!--and presses it to Toby's throat, right on the carotid.
     Adding, still all sweet, fake reason:
     "You too."
     Duchene looks to Metzger, to O'Reilly--pounding hard against the big hack's side, blocked from the action by one massive arm--and feels his mouth contort helplessly, eyes pleading. Like: Hey, man--shouldn't you, I mean--
    (--DO something?)
    While Metzger--nodding, shaking Ryan off--punches the nearest alarm...
    ...and then just turns his back on the whole scene, decisively.

A moment of eerie calm, now, as the alarm shrieks out through Oz:
     Beecher looks down at Keller, head in his lap, that keen hawk's profile already gone grey in the infirmary's artifical glare--then back up at Vern, as the shank's blade nicks the skin just over his pulse. Shuts his eyes. And seems, just for a second, like he really might just slide down the wall and melt away in front of everybody there, internally combust with grief and guilt and anger--an endless second of wrenching pain and regret, caught between one breath and the next.
     And then--
     --Beecher opens his eyes again, corpse-blue, wiped clean: Dead as Keller, one way or another. Barely recognizable as human. Fixes Vern, with this emptily quizzical look--
     (--oh, riiiight. YOU again.)
     And leans straight forward, into the shank's sharp edge. Hissing:
     "Go ahead, asshole: Do it, you *know* you want to. And won't you be quite the big, bad death row Daddy THEN, huh? Some political prisoner, some *soldier*."
     Voice dropping, nastily intimate:
     "You'll just be the guy who killed his prag *over* his prag, VERNON. Or...was that the other way around?"
     And Vern--pauses. Knowing--
     (--well, fuck it: It's *true*, isn't it? After all.)
     But: Not unless *I* LET it be.
     Meeting Beecher's eyes, blue on blue, like ice from the same frozen river. Mimicking his crazy smile. And rumbling back, equally low--equally intimate--
     "Wrong again. Toby."
     (*Baby*.)
     Gaining his feet, then, as the other three inmates watch...as the contact door squeals, and McManus--flanked by a cadre of Metzger's peers, Whittlesey among them--rushes the infirmary floor...while Dr Nathan trails along behind them, studiously ignoring O'Reilly's accusative backward glance...
     Quick, and graceful, and utterly without warning, Vern buries Duchene's shank to its tape-wrapped hilt in the side of Metzger's arrogant bull-neck--then wrenches it loose again, in a severed-artery SPURT, before anyone...even Metzger himself...has enough time to react. And falls to the floor, hands on his head, flanked by corpses: Knees-down in a mixed flood of blood, with Metzger on one side--holding his throat shut--and Keller on the other, still twitching, though only slightly. Cooling, by steady degrees, in Beecher's tight-locked arms.
     With Vern waiting for the first blow, patiently, head bent. And thinking:
     So ignore THAT, if you can--you pretetious fuckin' crooked *hack*.

Screams. Alarms. And a flood of alternate realities converging, divergent streams from the same source merging to form a single, unanswerable question--how far back would one have to go, exactly, to stem the angry tide that washed us here?
     A few possible scenarios, played out between synapses:
     --Jacoba Rausch Schillinger leaves Karl Senior, takes Vern with her. She marries again. Vern grows up happy, loved, different.
     --Chris doesn't end up in Lardner. He and Vern never meet. Terrible things may still happen to him--do, probably. But not this particular one.
     --Toby goes to that A.A. meeting that Jill Hu, the woman in the office down the hall, told him about. He stays more than five minutes, has a revelation. Gives up his practice. Starts a band.
     --Rachel Renton breaks up with her meth-selling boyfriend, completes her degree, gets tenure.
     --Kathy Rockwell leaves her bike a home, and takes the bus.
     Or: They all end up in Oz, just like before, and everything goes the way it goes. Except that, at some crucial moment--
     (After the pod attack? After the gym? After the riot? After the gym, again?)
     --Beecher and Schillinger simply agree to *leave* *each other* *the FUCK* *alone*.

But none of that's true. What's *true* is Keller, dead before he knew what hit him--no last words, no long goodbye. Beecher clutching him, hollowed and cold. Duchene, staring--Ryan's hand on his shoulder--at Metzger's shuddering hulk.
     And Vern, already submerged beneath a chaotic pile of guards, taking the last--and worst--beating of his life like a blessing, a gift, an all-too-fitting culmination. Smiling to himself, perversely happy--and thinking, as the blows rain down:
     You only get to kill me 'cause I *let* you, prags--same way I make everything else happen. Call the shots, give the orders. MY way, or the highway.
     'Cause...I'm Vern Schillinger, damnit. And that still DOES count for something.
     (In here.)
     Well: But where else is there, anyway?
     (Nowhere, really.)
     Not for me, or Keller. Or O'Reilly. Or even--
     (Beecher)
     Nowhere else left, in this whole hateful world, but the Merry Old Land of Oz...
     (...for any of us.)

End Part 10

Epilogue.