Three Miles to Regret
The night air cool on my face coming in through the windows
of the bus. It was too dark to see much of the scenery, but there’s not much to
see out here in the desert. The jostling of the ride and the crunch of the
wheels on the dirt road were almost enough to make me sleep, almost dream. The
occasional rut and the snap of the chains on my wrists always brought me back
to focus.
We’d been traveling for days now, just the seven of us. The
four guards, myself and the two other prisoners. The guards never talk much, at
least not to us anyway. My travel companions, on the other hand, you couldn’t
shut them up. Sal, I’m guessing is short for Sally, was short and round. She
was young but had the look of someone twice her age. Drugs have a way of aging
you. She had a mop of black hair that looked like it had been cut by a blind
barber missing a few fingers. She was serving fifty years for double
manslaughter. Apparently when choosing the location for your meth lab, the room
adjacent to your children’s bedroom is not the ideal location. When volatile
chemicals explode, things get messy.
Bill, the other one, was a stark opposite. He was old, balding and thin
as a whip. He didn’t say why he got pinched, but the way his eyes crawled all
over Sal, I could pretty much guess. I didn’t talk to any of them, had no
reason to. They didn’t know me and didn’t want to know them. It didn’t matter
where we all came from; we were all heading to the same place, Redemption.
Project Redemption they called it, supposed to be some sort
of rehabilitation center. The doctors would come every couple of months and
recruit among the inmates with promises of salvation and early parole. If there
weren’t any takers, the warden gave them their pick from solitary. The
candidates all had two things in common, violent crime and no family to speak
of.
There were all sorts of rumors around the yard about
Redemption. Government ran facility out in the middle of nowhere coupled with
the fact that nobody was ever seen again who left for there. I mean, you’d
think that there’d be something on the news about all the great work they do
there. Like I said, rumors abound. Some say we’re just over crowded and this
was a clean way to make some extra room, others think they’re brainwashing us
to turn us into super spooks. Some even think it’s for genetic testing, the
kind of things that make what the perfume companies do to mice look like a
family vacation. I don’t really care what they do there. The white coats said
they could make me forget and that’s all I need.
My wife haunts me every day; she’s always here with me,
constantly reminding me of my piss poor choices. It was a typical request,
milk, that’s all she wanted. I was tired from work and I forgot to stop. She
wanted me to run down to the market, but I just wanted to relax. I told her to
get it herself if it was that damn important. After a few harsh words and the
slam of the door she was gone and I was sleeping in my chair. I had woken me up,
my wife still wasn’t home. I decided to take me a shower. The bedroom was all
decked out in blue and pink balloons. I found the plastic tab with the plus
sign on it with a little note that read Congratulations Daddy! on it. I started
to cry when I read it.
There was pounding on the door; it was the cops, something
bad had happened. A city bus driver had been pulling double shifts, dosed off
coming to the light and lost control. The judge ruled it as an accident, told
me he was sorry for my loss. The driver walked without as little as a ticket
they said it was just unfortunate. Tears of joy ran down his face as he hugged
his wife and son after the verdict was read. I hated them, all of them, they
needed to pay.
His address was easy enough to find. He lived in a modest
dwelling befitting a bus driver. The front door came splintering off the hinges
under the weight of my shoulder. They were just sitting down for dinner, all
together at the table, made it fairly easy for me. “Please, I’ll give you
anything!” he cried up at me, “Anything?” I asked in return. “Anything!” he cried.
“I WANT MY FAMILY BACK!” I shrieked. I turned and leveled the shotgun at his
wife and began squeezing the trigger, her face contorting into a scream.
The bus slammed to a stop. My head rocked back and I opened
my eyes. We were at what looked like a gate house. The officer came aboard the
bus to check our identification. He checked us off the list and when to talk to
the driver. “About how much father is it?” asked the driver. “Just keep on this
main road and don’t make any turns. It’s about three more miles.”
People sign up for Redemption for just that. The hope of a
new life and a clean slate, I want neither. I’m beyond that, beyond saving. I
have no remorse, only regret.
