Chapter 90
NINETY
Eighty-nine days are a blessing. Day ninety is the reckoning Kane has learnt after seven months in solitary confinement as he rocks in the corner of the cell singing, “Eighty-nine.” It’s partially a wish.
One which won’t come true, but it doesn’t deter him from trying to change the date as he continues singing, “Eighty-nine.”
His repetitions get faster, so does the rocking. He can rock, sing, hurt himself—nothing will stop what’s to come.
When the door opens—the light breaching the desolate box burning his eyes—his singing turns to screams of anguish before anyone steps inside.
The screams subside when he notices the new guard laughing. They always laugh at him, yet this one has his attention as they throw him a pair of grey coveralls. “Get dressed or I’ll walk you out in your diaper.”
He snatches the stiff material off the floor and quickly covers himself, eager to step into the light that stops the monsters entering him.
When he does, he’s faced with the mocking taunts of the guards as he silently begs, Asher, help me.
He quickly brings his shoulders together as the guards bracket him, their keys jangling through the prison while they continue their taunts.
“Do you think the diaper is a fetish?” the one on his right asks.
“No idea,” the left answers, leaning into him. “Is that what gets your cock hard?”
“He can’t hear you. He’s one of the crazies. You know what they’re like.” The other shakes their head, voice turning high-pitched. “The voices! The voices are all I can hear!”
They both laugh at him when he’s spent every moment of his life before prison being invisible.
As a child, Asher took his name away. As an adult, he’s done the same thing.
He’s no longer Kane, not that he was ever really allowed the opportunity to find out who Kane was.
Now it’s worse. He’s no longer not-Asher, he’s a number.
An inmate. A chomo. A sicko in a diaper.
He smiles to himself, becoming giddy as he’s led to a private visitor’s room. He tells Asher, “Mom and Dad are here. Eighty-nine. Mom and Dad. Not ninety, eighty-nine.”
“Oh, he’s not going to last long,” the guard on his right says. “He’ll need to go on watch soon.”
“Let him.” The left laughs, jangling the keys to make Kane flinch at the loud noise. “I’ve got him on my list, and I want the weekend off.”
Kane keeps telling himself it’s the eighty-ninth day as the guards discuss the league they created for the inmates in solitary confinement, commiserating over their loss when a newer guard saved an inmate after their suicide attempt.
But he stops in front of the table in the private visiting room, blinking when his parents aren’t sitting on the other side. Nor is his lawyer.
It’s a new person, one he faintly recognizes as the man stands, smiling. “Missed me, kid?”
“Niko?”
The man, Niko, nods as he narrows his steel-blue eyes at the guards. “Get him a glass of water.” The guards leave and he gestures to the seat. “Sit down, we don’t have long, your lawyer is waiting for you.”
Kane slowly lowers into the seat opposite his friend, relaxing despite the way pain shoots up his spine from the pressure.
The diaper is padded but it doesn’t stop him feeling the ache of the stitches after the last guards beat him, ripping them open.
Niko kept him out of solitary confinement, and he was the first person who asked him his name.
“Are you back?” Kane asks, hopeful he’ll be allowed out of the box.
“No, I came to see you. You said you were going to write to me, so I was checking the mail every day like a wife whose husband went to war.”
There’s a low laugh in the room, one Kane doesn’t recognize. As he looks around searching for the source of it, he catches his reflection on the mirrored glass, seeing he’s the cause.
When was the last time he laughed?
He can’t remember as he stares at himself, Asher standing beside him in the reflection. Asher is clean, his arms at his sides, but Kane? He has his hands cupped at his chin and his eyes are sunken in.
There’s a soft tap on the table before Niko gently asks, “Has someone hurt you, Kane?”
He shakes his head while he stares at his reflection. Then laughs because that’s what Asher called him. Asher laughs too as he points at the mirror. “We’re both reflections.”
“Kid?” Niko says, “Has someone hurt you?”
Kid, Kane thinks. A nice thing to be called. Kids aren’t dirty or broken; they have opportunity.
Instead, he says, “I thought I was seeing my parents.”
“You know you can tell me?”
He nods.
“I’m going to try to get you out.”
He nods, again.
Niko watches him without laughing or mocking him, like he’s afraid. It’s a new expression Kane isn’t used to being directed at him. He can’t recall a moment in his life when someone was afraid of him.
“There’s a four letter word every person has been conditioned to think is the hardest to say,” Niko says as he continues watching his friend.
Love, Kane thinks. But it was the easiest, most freeing thing he ever experienced.
It was never difficult for him to love Delilah; it was as natural as his lungs drawing in air.
He can’t form the words to express it fully, only managing to weakly mumble, “Love?” as he avoids the stare across the metal table.
“Nah, kid.” Niko gently lowers his head, trying to catch his eyes. “Help.”
The guard returns, bringing an end to their conversation as he places a plastic cup of water on the table. “Mr. Kadare, time’s up.”
“Fuck off outside, I paid you enough to speak to him alone.”
Niko waits for them to be alone to take something from his pocket, and he speaks softly as he stretches across the metal table. “I remember you telling me you collected marbles.”
Kane fondly recalls how he used to dig through bins of the glass orbs for the most obscure ones as Niko opens his hand, revealing a small glass bead that looks like a frozen fire ball with bright reds and oranges trapped inside the glass.
“To start your collection,” he says, gently pulling Kane’s hand away from his face to place the marble in his palm. “I’ll bring you more. We’ll count them when you get out. Remember you’ve got someone outside this place, okay? I’ll always be here for you.”
Some of his personality is returned now that he’s being treated like a human being, his arms slowly relaxing as he asks his friend, “Did you get married?”
“Yeah, kid, I did. The wife wants to meet you. Don’t eat anything she cooks. She’s shit at it.”
“Francesca?” Kane nods.
“Frannie. The name pisses her off. I’ll even pay you to call her that.” There’s a knock on the door, but Niko dips his head to catch Kane’s eyes. “Remember you have people waiting for you. Don’t forget it or let this place fuck with your head.”
“Yeah, we’ll see each other when I get out.”
“And you’ll write me letters, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Kane smiles. It’s small, painful, but he keeps it in place as Niko walks around the table to leave. When they have their backs to each other, Kane says, “Niko?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Thank you for not forgetting me.”
“Don’t thank me.”
“And for my marble,” he whispers too low for anyone to hear.
The door slams as he stares at the small orb in his palm as Asher says, “You used to have a jar full of them on your window.”
“Delilah helped me pick them.”
With the mention of her name, Kane smiles wider.
They had an innocent love, although it began with a betrayal.
She was obsessed with the stars in the same way he was obsessed with her.
He spent years watching her, waiting for the perfect moment to overcome the inferiority he felt in Asher’s shadow to make her his. Only, while he was waiting, Asher took.
The door reopens, two pairs of dress shoes tapping against the linoleum floor as Kane curls his fingers over the marble to prevent it being taken from him. He sits up straight, ready to greet his parents, only when the visitors step around the table, it’s not them.
“It’s never them,” Asher grits as he places his clean hand on Kane’s shoulder in the way a caring brother would. “We don’t need them when we have each other.”
Having each other is a concept Kane hasn’t experienced before. It’s always been Asher then him. Yet now, in this visitor’s room, he has the one thing he’s always wanted—his brother by his side—so he doesn’t shy away from his lawyer as he asks, “Did my appeal go through?”
The woman shakes her head as she adjusts the soft silk collar of her blouse.
A small pin sits on the lapel of her blazer above the visitor’s badge, and it takes a moment for him to work out the image hidden in the swirls.
A lion head, a ram’s head, and a snake, all three animals intertwined together.
His lawyer takes out a small tablet from her bag, clicking away until she turns it around for him to watch the love of his life laid in the middle of a bed with one man between her legs and another straddling her chest.
Choking noises fill the small visitor’s rooms and Asher grips his shoulder even tighter. “That fucking bitch.”
But Kane is staring at the time stamp. Two months ago.
“While you’ve been in here,” Asher spits, “she’s been whoring it up out there. Getting fucked and spit-roasted like a fucking porn star.”
The woman who’s supposed to be on his side changes allegiance as she skips to another clip, another date, another assortment of men taking the same pretty girl he thought was his.
“This is your punishment,” his lawyer says. “You took from us, now we will take from you until you’re left with nothing.”
“It’s not her?” Kane asks his brother.
“It is,” she answers instead. “This is your precious Delilah, the one you killed for, who you destroyed your family for. I hope it was worth it, Mr. Xandros, because you’re not going to recognize the man you were when we repay your misdeeds.”
“I didn’t,” he begs.
His lawyer doesn’t care. She’s filled with disdain as she gestures for her assistant to pass Kane the envelope. Asher tries to pull his hand back as he says, “Don’t read it. You know her.”
He doesn’t heed the warning, curiosity getting the better of him.
He unfolds the ripped edge of the envelope tab to remove the three sheets of loose paper.
The first has Delilah’s handwriting on it, but it’s erratic and tear-stained.
He traces each inky splotch thinning the paper while his heart breaks further at an altered version of history.
An account of false events all penned by the woman who owns his heart along with another letter addressed to the judge of his case, both portraying Kane as a sick, obsessed stalker.
“Kane, don’t read it,” Asher says again.
He keeps ignoring the warnings as he flicks between watching the screen and reading different lines of the letters. Each new piece of information makes him sink deeper inside of himself.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until Asher becomes more aggressive, filled with hate.
“She’s a fucking bitch, she did this to you,” his brother snaps.
Kane holds the marble tighter, pushing it deeper against his palm to the point it hurts.
A good pain that he enjoys, distracting him as he holds the letters in a loose fist in his other hand.
The distraction of Asher’s cursing, the marble, the images of Delilah with different men, and her words calling him a rapist are too much.
They make him forget ninety when his visit comes to an end and the guards take him back to his cell.
It’s not until they walk away, leaving the door open he begins to scream, “EIGHTY-NINE!”
He forgot, Delilah made him forget, and now the ninetieth day is here as a group of five men enter a cell barely big enough for him.
The metal door slams behind them, the lock clicking into place, trapping him as he sinks to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees with his head tucked.
It’s too dark to see their features and they never speak, but he begs, “Please don’t. It’s eighty-nine.”
They don’t listen.
They never do.
Yet he continues begging as he holds his marble while they overpower him. He can’t stop them opening his mouth, he can’t stop them cutting the coveralls off his body or ripping the diaper away. When they force themselves inside his body, he can only hold the marble tighter so he can keep it safe.
He protects the little glass fire ball when he can’t protect himself.
Until the searing pain of his stitches being torn overload his senses.