Deliver Me

Chapter One

Chapter One

Summer

T he letter that changed Gabriel’s life arrived on a Tuesday. The first one he’d received in over a decade. It landed in his bunk just after the evening mail delivery, aided in its flight by his smirking cellmate. Alex knew he didn’t get mail.

Everyone knew it.

Yet there it was, out of place on his threadbare blanket. There was nothing suspicious about the envelope. Black ink, a stamp, and a return address he didn’t recognize written in looping feminine script … but scrawled across the front were two words written in black marker, clearly added after the original writing. The last letter of it even covered the corner of the stamp.

His name.

Gabriel Myers.

“What the hell is this?”

“I don’t know, man. You’ve got to open it.”

“Yeah? Well, no shit , genius,” Gabriel snapped, but he stood for a moment tapping the letter against his thigh.

Alex merely shrugged, unimpressed by the outburst, and turned his attention back to his own mail. Gabriel had known more than a few people who were seriously fucked up, even before he landed himself in this hellhole, but Alex Hayes was colder than most. Lean and wiry, with pasty white skin and vividly orange hair, Gabriel figured it came from too many years of getting his ass kicked as a kid, but he didn’t ask, and Alex didn’t tell.

He sat down on his bunk, holding the letter up to analyze it before taking out the contents. It had been opened already, obviously, and everything inside already read and examined for potential threats or clues of misconduct. The guards were all nosy, disgusting pigs but for once it didn’t bother him. There were too many questions tumbling around in his mind.

When was the last time anyone bothered to write to him? Surely it hadn’t been long after the trial. The letters of support had stopped rolling in once the verdict came down. Maybe they couldn’t sympathize anymore, or maybe it was because the news stopped blasting his face nonstop across every channel, but either way he had lost all contact with the outside world a long time ago.

He ignored Alex’s curious stare—there was never a single moment of privacy in this place—and tore the top off the envelope.

The letter inside was written on a single sheet of clean lined paper, folded in even thirds, and composed in the same dark black ink and feminine handwriting that had been used to write the addresses on the envelope.

Dear inmate,

I realize you don't know me, but I’m hoping that this letter might change that. I hope that it finds you well and you are at least willing to read it and consider the offer of friendship that it contains.

My name is Mia and I volunteer with my local church in their women’s Bible study group. We meet on Wednesday evenings to pray and organize our efforts for various charities.

One of our members has a cousin that has spent the last few years in the same facility that you're in now and he mentioned that some of you don't have anyone on the outside to write to. That sounded terribly lonely, so she suggested we start a letter writing campaign through the warden. Each member of my prayer group wrote a letter, and the prison distributed them to those who seemed most in need of a friendly pen pal.

My letter found its way to you, and I hope that you’ll write back and let me offer you some semblance of comfort and friendship during your stay in prison, however long that may be.

I’ll keep you in my prayers,

Mia Anderson

The words were plain enough but did little to ease his confusion. No reasonable person would be writing to him. There wasn’t a redeemable bone in his six-foot, three-inch frame. Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the thick black waves as he looked around the cell, taking in the dirt, grime and the peeling paint. The whole place had an aura of filth and he had cigarettes stashed in his toilet, for Christ’s sake.

Whoever this lady was, she had no clue about how the real world worked.

She’d keep him in her prayers? Fuck that. He’d seen how little prayer could do. At best, God didn’t exist. At worst, he was a sadist who got off on the suffering he let run rampant in innocent people’s lives.

“Well?”

“Just a pity letter from some uppity religious bitch who thinks she can save my soul,” he said as he crumpled the letter in his hand.

The heat was brutal in the late afternoon. There was no place to hide from the Texas sun and the temperature had been in the triple digits for weeks. Walking to the mailbox was a short trip to the end of the dirt driveway and back, but even that was enough to have sweat dripping down Mia’s sides and her brown hair hanging limply down her back. The loose blue sundress she wore was the nearest to naked that a decent woman could be while lounging on a Saturday afternoon, and it still clung damply to her skin as she hurried back to the house, making a messy bun with the elastic hair tie she always kept on her wrist in the summer months as she went.

She’d have to make a pitcher of sweet tea this evening before her dad came home. The air conditioning at the church wasn’t always reliable and he liked to sit outside on the shaded front porch in the evenings, sipping a cold drink and watching the lightning bugs dance through the yard. Things cooled off a touch once the sun went down and, if they were lucky, they might even get a faint breeze.

This time of year, everything smelled like honeysuckle, and she plucked a white blossom from the vine near the door. A quick twist at the end to separate the petals and a downward tug pulled the stamen out, bringing with it a single drop of clear nectar that danced sweetly across her tongue.

She let the screen door slam behind her, welcoming the ceiling fan’s cool air over her skin as she sat down at the kitchen table to flip through the mail.

Advertisements.

Bills.

A thank you card from a parishioner that was addressed to her father.

Her hand stilled on the last item, buried at the bottom of the pile. The envelope had her name on it, inscribed neatly in blue ink, the kind that reminded her of cheap Bic pens like the ones they use at the bank downtown because they knew everyone stole them.

Her stomach did a slow roll as she chewed nervously at the corner of her thumbnail. There was no return address but there was really only one thing this could be, and the person who wrote it might not be entirely friendly. None of the other women in the prayer group had gotten a response yet, so they were all unsure if their attempts to communicate had been welcomed by the recipients.

She ripped open the envelope and pulled out half a sheet of white legal paper that was ragged and uneven at the edges where it had been torn.

Mia,

Next time you write you should ask the warden to give your letter to someone else. I didn’t land in prison for tax fraud or stealing some old grandma's pension. Save your prayers for someone who deserves them.

I'm one of the dangerous ones.

Gabriel Myers