Vic was escorted to a closed-off cell. It was a room with a steel door. A metal cot nailed into the wall. He imagined these were the kind of beds sanitariums used. It smelled of Lysol, day old sweat and recently dried paint. The cinder block walls were a puke green color. Everything in the room was depressing. He craved a hot shower, a bar of soap, and most of all, a change out of his bloodied clothes.
Vic lapped water in the sink, being dry mouthed. Then he lay on the cot to collect his thoughts. Hours or only minutes might’ve passed when he was startled from his deep sleep, waking in a fog. He rubbed his eyes to clear the cottony blotches to see who was talking to him in the cell. Vic missed the beginning of what he was saying. And when had the guy entered the room?
What struck Vic first was the fact the man was wearing black sunglasses. He was dressed in an army coat and white washed jeans. He had a mullet haircut and under the coat was an old school Budweiser T-shirt. He sat on the floor across from the cot and talked to Vic like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Vic realized he had slept through the man’s arrival. Had to have. But there wasn’t another cot in the room. Did the police expect them to bunk together? Whatever, he thought.
The stranger kept talking. “Women give me the hardest time. I guess I’m not the prettiest catch on this earth.” He counted items off of his fingers. “But come on, I’m nice, I’m polite, I buy the ladies drinks and I always wear a condom. That’s a winner if you ask me. The babes got it out for me, man. God doesn’t want me to get laid.”
“I hear you,” Vic said just to talk. “Very true.”
The stranger’s voice turned mean. “God has got it out for all men. We’re nothing but horny dogs. Sleazebags. I admit I’m a sleazebag. All men are sleazebags. So fear God, is what I’m telling you. He’s teaching us a lesson for giving women so much trouble.”
Vic suddenly felt uncomfortable. “Wait, what are you talking about?”
It was as if Vic hadn’t spoken, the way the guy carried on. “I met a girl the other night. Nice tits. Tits that could make a man howl at the moon. Tits a man dreams of coming home to after a long hard day. Tits better than a cold one. This girl, she was a blonde. A real honey hole. She could make a man sin. She’s in the parking lot outside this strip club. She’s got on a pair of cut-off jean shorts and an undershirt that’s pressing so hard against those tits, I could see them, the buds and everything, but it’s not the same as seeing them without clothing. She’s got to be naked. She’s teasing me, pretending to take off her shirt. She has me going. I’ve got a hard on the size of Texas. Her tits have got me in a trance, and when she hiked up that shirt and showed me those titties,” the man shrieked at the top of his lungs, throwing off the glasses, “the light coming off of them was so hot it made me gouge my eyes out with my own two hands! Oh, the paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!”
Vic yelped seeing the man’s gummed up holes for eyes. Shreds of meat and tissue hung from the hollows in strings. The man had his grip on Vic’s arms, shouting in his face: “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
In a blink, the man vanished.
Suffering a heavy dose of shock, Vic kept pealing the walls with his terror until his throat could give no more. His arms were bent in front of him as if he were still fending off the eyeless man. Vic bolted off of the cot and banged his body against the cell door, demanding to be released. Nobody answered his summons for another hour. By then, Vic knew he was in trouble. The gunfire and sounds of panic that had erupted throughout the building had finally died down into silence.
The door to his cell clicked and opened.