He exited the room and had one of the nurses enter to keep an eye on Bayle and the infant. He began to roam the halls aimlessly. His soul felt full to the point of bursting and all he wanted to do was dance, but didn’t know a place to do so. James turned a corner and saw him coming. “Alex , what is the news?”“The baby is born; her name is Victoria.”James knowing how Alex felt led him to the throne room and ordered everyone out. He then had the last guard out fetch Scarlett. She arrived in haste and entered to see the two men dancing like fools. She joined in. After completely exhausting himself Alex collapsed on his throne while James and Scarlett sat on the steps before him.“How do you feel now?” James asked,“I feel light, like unto a feather, but my heart won’t stop beating,”“I remember when Daniel was born,” James reminisced, “I had no one to help me through the feelings, I danced all night in the woods,”“I remember,” said Alex , “you had some of us worried you’d left

“Damn him,” he says as he turns his face to the right exposing a rash of bumps along his hairline. He has always favored the military high and tight haircut, but this time the prison barber has cut too close. Had it been another day, he would have complained to the warden about this obvious attempt to disfigure him. Not because he gave a damn, but because it was fun to cause the assholes problems. Not much fun to be had on death row and you had to find it where you could. Not much longer and the fun would stop completely. But he would make these last hours enjoyable if he could help it. He lies back on the bed and puts his hands behind his head. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander to more enjoyable thoughts.He’s forgotten most of the images of his “activities” in his head to masturbate to, and the ones he can remember, bring him no further gratification. Outside, whenever the pictures in his head faded on him, he knew it was time to go out and replenish them. That meant to go

How nice it would be to see her father, who passed away so many years before. He would comfort her. He would know what to say. She feels she will see him again soon. She trembles once more. Very soon.Matthew moves gracefully out of the cell and bows deeply as the prison chaplain looks on in wonder. “Ahm readay, yaw highneth!” he drawls in a mocking, bad British accent. The blood on his chin and lips has started to dry, and the warden almost pulls his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the mess. His predisposition for order has prompted this reckless act. His Aryan look is not by accident and is known by some choice friends as ‘the mini Adolph’ for his fastidious and sometimes fanatical want for order. As fast as the impulse comes, it leaves him. He knows if he or anyone else tried that stunt, they would pull back a bloody nub. This is what Matthew wants. Let him have it.“The govna will thay me now!” Matthew snickers, as he stands erect. The warden, well kept and rather v

Throwing the burned butt to the ground, he looks back and forth along the busy street. He pulls his leather jacket snugly around his solid frame and leans against the brick wall that is part of Rosie’s Deli.He grew up in this neighborhood and has seen a lot of change since he was a little punk running these streets.Always one for adventure, he honed his street smarts by befriending those whom his mother and father, both Irish and definitely proud of it, found least desirable. When the blacks first started to occupy the buildings a couple of blocks up from his own, he was told by his father, a soft-spoken tough guy from Jersey, to stay clear of the people several blocks north.“There is a lot of bad shit going on over there with them niggers,” his father would say. “They got that crack now, and it’s causing them jigs to go friggin’ bananas.” He wouldn’t call his father a racist per se, but that’s just how they talked back in those days.Moreover, what his father said was the truth.

The damage done was not fatal. It did, however, succeed in awakening something in him that made him feel alive. Made him feel ... special. So much so, that he rather reveled in the cruelty. It gave him reason for the deviously wicked thoughts that had coursed through his brain at an age before the violence really got going. The abuse itself gave him reason for his violent desires. He lived for his revenge fantasies and often planned the murder of classmates for hours behind the closed doors of his stinky, sweat- and fart-filled room. (For years after he moved out, his mother, who died mysteriously when he was twenty-five, swore the stink had penetrated the brick interior.)He was fascinated by the Columbine massacre and even collected newspaper and magazine clippings about the event for years afterward. He wished he had had the balls to do what they had done—minus the offing of himself, of course. He thought that maybe he would have tried something similar if he had had a partner, lik