A Vicious Circle: Chapter 13 / 13

The Dream Is Dead

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Chapter 13

The Dream Is Dead

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Some ten hours after he’d gotten even with Dash, Adam took a seat on the bus and was heading home. The backpack rested on his knees like a pet he hoped wouldn’t roar, for inside it was the sawed-off shotgun Max had given him. A gift, for safety reasons. You never know what’s gonna happen, Styles could still hear him say in his head.

He would have to rearrange his life entirely. Start everything anew. Anything – no matter how small the detail – that in any way, shape, or form tied him to his shady past had to sink into oblivion.

However, he couldn’t do it quite yet. Yes, things began to brighten somewhat, but he was still bound by his word. In a week’s time, his friends in vendetta were to visit him to retrieve the promised drugs; they had figured they would have to lay low for a while first, so as not to attract unwanted attention. How they would pull it off, he had no idea. In fact, Adam didn’t even know whether the old warehouse was still guarded by Dash’s guys, who by now could only be guessing that their boss had been dead.

Upon remembering how many people worked for his former boss – unaware that most of them had already left Dash’s organization – he imagined how difficult an endeavor it could become to pry the drugs from the henchmen’s hands. Then again, when he considered how agile and capable Raphael and Max had been with their guns, Adam was sure they would form an invincible trio. The guns and the balls needed to show up at a place like that should be arguments enough for the thugs to hand it all over. If they valued their lives.

Slowly but surely, the bus rolled toward Styles’s stop. He had all the time in the world now that he had dealt with the most lethal of his problems – Roman Dash. But despite his liberation from the former hierarchy, he found himself in a desperate hurry; after going through betrayal, imprisonment under those humiliating conditions, losing his family, and nearly getting killed in a strange and unfamiliar city, the only thing he wanted now was to go home. And even there, what would he find? The decomposing bodies of his dead relatives lying on the floor in pools of dried-up blood? He shook his head and rubbed his bald temples. No. There were still many things to be taken care of and absolutely no time to lose. Every second was of the highest value, and that was why he got up from his seat early, before the bus fully stopped, and walked all the way from the back toward the front, to the exit.

Amped up as he was to finally leave the long vehicle, Adam failed to notice a leg stretched across the aisle between the seats, belonging to one of the passengers who had just woken up from a nap. He tripped over it and fell. In a desperate bid to save his face, Adam threw his forearms up and covered his nose and forehead. But his reflexes were useless; his features still hit the grimy floor.

Adam initially wanted to ignore this incident and just go on with his life, but something stopped him. He had just stumbled and fallen in front of everybody, right on his scarred face. With that, his sense of self suffered a fierce blow. What bothered him most was that it needn’t have happened. He knew that accidents occurred, but unnecessary embarrassments defied his standards of prudence and control. He felt asinine for crashing down, especially since it could have been avoided. And just who the fuck did those people think they could mess with? The great Adam Styles, who worked for the mob and killed his own boss, the widely feared Roman Dash? He was supposed to let this public humiliation slide? Never! He was not to be fucked with anymore! And people would have to know it – even if they had to learn it the hard way.

He got up swiftly, his face red and tense, and rummaged through his backpack. While the perpetrator of this accident tried to cobble together an apology, Adam pulled out the sawed-off shotgun, turned around, and, aiming at the young man’s head, pulled the trigger.

Despite all the horrors he’d witnessed while working for Dash, he was startled to discover just how much the bloody sight he now beheld horrified him, no matter how many people he’d killed in the past. But at the same time, he realized he felt a certain kind of fulfillment – gratification, even – one far greater than that caused by Dash’s death.

Gasps and shrill screams filled the bus as a mist of blood and brain matter exploded and splattered onto the window. All eyes settled on Adam, and he understood that he had to escape as soon as possible before anyone could get a good look at him and pass his mug along to the cops, who were not on his payroll. He was about to turn around when all of a sudden, the person sitting next to the decapitated cadaver – a young man barely into his twenties – stood up and punched Adam with all his strength, right in the cheek. A piercing ringing exploded in his ears as the vehicle’s interior began to spin around him. The scar, where the blow landed, split open, gushing blood freely down his haggard face. He buried it in his hands as all awareness of what was happening around him slipped away. The opponent, exploiting Adam’s temporary disability, clamped a hand over the back of his skull, fingers tangled in the mohawk, drove him down the aisle toward the far back of the bus, and smashed his head against the vehicle’s rear window.

In the same instant his forehead collided with the glass, Adam snapped upright in his bed with a violent lurch.

Soaked through with sweat, he tried to bolt from the narrow bed shoved against the back wall of his cell, but the sheets caught in his legs, sent him crashing to the floor, hard. While he lay there in the cold, half-bound by the twisted blanket, he almost choked on his own breath as a hoarse, wild scream tore out of his veiny throat.

‘Peter! I didn’t kill him! It wasn’t me! Peter! It wasn’t me!’

Not a whole minute had passed when a correctional officer leaned his gut against the metal bars. He was completely bald, his beard so disheveled it looked like someone had glued an animal to his face.

‘Styles! Calm the fuck down, or I’ll throw your sorry ass back where you were rotting last time,’ the guard warned the young inmate in a low growl.

‘But it wasn’t me! Let me out of here! Please! I didn’t do anything!’ Adam yelled, all the while looking at the brawny officer with begging, tear-filled eyes.

The bearded man turned and keyed the squealing radio on his shoulder. ‘Sergeant Dashinsky? Bobson here. Styles has gone off the fuckin’ rails. What do you want me to do, boss?’

‘Again?’ A cracked sigh escaped the small speaker. ‘Take him to the hole, then. Let him cool off for a few days,’ the distorted voice on the other end of the radio answered. A dry snicker followed. ‘And don’t call me boss. We’re not in the mob here.’

About half a minute after the order was issued, two more officers arrived, entered Adam’s cell, and, after putting him in handcuffs, yanked him out to a separate one.

Solitary confinement. The hole.

‘I didn’t kill him! I’m innocent! You gotta believe me!’ Styles screamed as the officers dragged him down the corridor.

The other inmates were egging Adam on, urging him to try and free himself. Most of them were lifers who would never walk out of prison anyway. They just wanted to be provided with a bit of free entertainment at Adam’s expense.

‘You bastards! You filthy sons of whores!’ an old man howled from his cell upon seeing the officers passing by his cell. ‘You-’

‘Shut up, Kenner, or you’re gonna join him!’ one of the guards said over his shoulder, never slowing his pace.

Henry Kenner, known among the inmates as “Grampa,” lifted his hands and retreated compliantly to the back of his cell, where he sat quietly on his bed, his face drawn tight with anger, ready to explode.

‘I swear, I didn’t kill him!’ Adam yelled again as he tried his best to break free from the correctional officers’ iron grip, but to no avail. His throat was barely able to rasp out another scream.

‘Right, right. We know that, Styles. You’ve told us a hundred times already. Now shut the fuck up!’ Officer Bobson said as he followed behind, then turned to one of the other guards. ‘I can’t stand his fucking yapping. Always the same shit with this guy…’

Bobson opened the door. Another officer uncuffed Adam and shoved him inside his new cell, after which all of them headed back to the control booth, where mellow jazz and news about a presidential election drifted faintly from the radio.

When he somewhat regained his composure, Adam sat on the bare, cold floor and started banging the back of his head fitfully against the painted cinder-block wall. The cell was scarcely larger than a horse stall. He never knew how much time he would have to spend in solitary – that was up to the disciplinary board. The shortest stretch he remembered was one day. The longest, three weeks.

Patience was his only ally now. He knew he could not count on the officers’ goodwill – that was never an option. They were not there to accommodate any of the inmates, least of all the disgraceful troublemaker they saw him as.

Once more, Adam Styles would remain in the secluded cell, left there until he no longer spent his breath trying to convince the correctional officers and his fellow inmates of his alleged innocence.

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THE END