Jailbreak

cw: suicide

Help was always a few feet away, just out of reach.

The phone sits right beside Tamara—crying rings upon rings. It’s just a few feet away, she reminds herself.

A few feet entails greater than arm's length, which is all her body is ready to permit. She’s slumped up on the couch, in front of a boxy old-timey TV screen that likely came out of a nearby landfill. Every so often, it starts fizzing up a grey discombobulation of error. This happens to be one of those times.

“Maggie said homicide was fun,” Tamara mumbled, lost in thought.

Jackshit.

Look where Maggie’s at now.

It was just two weeks prior when Tamara was playing chess against the serial killer, separated by prison bars, and she won. For the first time, ever. Now she wonders if it was all that 4-D chess shit, where your losses are strategic and when the master plan only starts to unveil itself.

“Maggie’s not all that smart though.” To be fair—she did win every match that preceded this incident.

But maybe, if she was, she wouldn’t have gotten caught.

Well, perhaps the Po-Po thinks she’s just a one-timer. Maggie’s luck had to fail her someday.

They always called her a little bit mental in the head, Tamara reminisced. She had a kid at home, and she was a serial killer. If one, Maggie, why the latter? No—why both? The kid’s a liability, or you’re the liability to the kid. Neither one is quite favorable.

It was just the past week, when she revisited the prison cell. It was just the past week, when she revisited the prison cell. Maggie, unlike the other prisoners, had at least six gaping holes around her earlobe, all absent of the jewelry she was once permitted to have. She had a palm tree tattoo on the left of her neck, covered by her overly saturated purple hair. It was hard to forget her even though Tamara started wanting to. There was something so unsettling about her in Tamara’s latest visit—the way her eyes folded, the way her face hanged almost as if she was the living incarnate of a zombie who sure as hell didn’t want to be where she was but—at the same time—didn’t mind it nearly as much as the other prisoners vocalized.

It’s been a few years since she first got admitted. It was a day in May, or maybe June—but July seems more right. The week, let alone the day, was less important. It had to be less important, because Tamara didn’t remember—and Tamara couldn’t care.

The phone rings. Tamara ignores it. Phone calls are too much nowadays—shooting texts are far better. It’s been the second time this hour, but Tamara is reassured that it will fade inevitably. The old house phone needed some salvation, inevitably.

It’s a Saturday. The fridge is empty. Sammy, her 22-year-old brother’s out-and-about, probably getting some booze. He doesn’t prefer the fizzy stuff, but he’ll take what he can get.

Tamara’s hungry.

Maggie’s probably hungry too.

Tamara’s lost her appetite.

The phone rings for the third time, a few hours past. Tamara reaches over and picks it up, puts it on silent, and hurls it to the nearby couch. She misses, and it hits the wooden, not so soft floorboards. Scrambling for the handheld, she curses and clutches it in her bare hands.

The phone still rings.

“Thank god,” Tamara mutters.

Gazing at the screen, the phone call is addressed from the Federal Corrections Complex.

She doesn’t want to pick up this call—she has to pick up this call. If only for the chance that she would be on the other side.

“Excuse me?”

“Is this Samuel Willis?”

“No, he’s out. Can I help you?”

A few overlapping murmurs fill the other end of the line.

“When will your guardian get back?”

Guardian. Tamara scoffs.

“I don’t know—the evening?”

“Alright. Have a good day, ma’am.”

“But I—” the line clicked.

I could’ve taken it, Tamara thought to herself. She’s not 12 for anything—and in Maggie’s words, that was old enough.

…

She should’ve never touched the phone. She can’t stifle the disappointment from Sammy’s weary eyes, spelling his discontentment. It’s not like he ever explicitly says anything—but his face shows it. He feels it, and from him, she feels guilt ooze through her too.

And just like that, Sammy came back propping the front door open. The sound of two grocery bags dangling from either side sparked Tamara’s mind full of curiosity. Setting them aside on the floor and making his way over to Tamara’s side, he plopped down by her to meet her at eye level. As he brought himself to speak, his breath reeked of bitterness.

“Tam—hungry much?”

“Sammy, they called for you. Catch.” Tamara flinched as he fumbled, barely clutching the phone two feet away from him that had already suffered a fatal blow a few hours past. Sammy seems too out of it to notice the new crevices should he have run his fingers down the glass frame.

“Alright, well, Sammy will be there in a minute, alright? Help yourself.” Papa Johns lies on the foot long countertop, out cold. No fresh pizza for tonight, Tamara resigned. Leaning by the countertop and taking a hold of one of the slices, she gnawed through a chunk of cold flesh, telling herself again that any food is good food.

The last time the complex called, it was on minor updates—something to do with the times to visit, and if there were any details regarding time slots that changed. Otherwise, it was implied that the staff hadn’t wanted a single thing to do with the family. Sure enough, it was mutual. The only other instance the complex initiated this mode of conversation was through the once-a-week calls permitted between family members. The phone number would be addressed by the same name, however, making it impossible to distinguish. It was a probability Tamara thought she had to entertain—though today, for some particular reason, she had no motive to. Anyways, if there was a talk between Maggie and Tam, Sammy wouldn’t be far behind.

Tamara had recalled, though, that their once-a-week pass was still ready to be activated. A seed of guilt implants itself in her heart, asking for forgiveness.

Sammy shuts the only other door that was not the front door or the bathroom door—the one to the bedroom. But he didn’t know that the lock mechanism broke two days ago.

Guardian this, guardian that. Jackshit.

With a slight push of the knob, the door cracked open making little to no sound.

Through the aperture, Tamara’s eyes meet Sammy’s distraught trembling lip. Sammy’s eyes look bloodshot, staring dead at the wall ahead of him. He’s paralyzed now—surely all because of the alcohol. He collapses, narrowly evading the hard descent as he collides with their rugged, shared mattress.

“Woah, Sammy!” Tamara clutches his arm, which has let loose of the phone clasped tightly. Its imprints scar his palms.

“I’m so sorry for your loss—it was hours after, and we didn’t—” a voice echoes on the other end.

“So you conducted an autopsy without any regar—” His voice, normally on the softer end, unlocks another degree of ferocity that Tamara hadn’t ever heard come out of him.

“Sammy?”

…

They always called her a little bit mental in the head, Tamara reminisced. Enough to get her killed—of her own doing. Enough to likely shatter her oldest and youngest at home, the latter of whom’s name remained imprinted to the left of her neck almost as a reminder—of what—no, who, she left behind.

It’s been an hour since the news has come out. Tamara shouldn’t have opened the goddamn door. Now she’s smothered in Sammy’s arms and his tears.

She can imagine the sirens blare their overlapping melodies, just like the movies. The caution tape now bleeds the same undertones, having made contact with the material imparting a bit of its own flavor. Suicide didn’t have quite the ring she thought her mother’s jailbreak would’ve been like, but perhaps in a moment of desperation, Maggie thought it would suffice.

“Mom’s the Grim Reaper; she’s probably sent many people off to heaven.

Too bad she has to go back to hell.”

Her head sings the disorienting lyric over and over again, making a horrid, gut-wrenching melody.

A growing itch rests atop Tamara’s skin, asking for retribution. Her heart aches a little, drowning in Sammy’s expressionless doubt. It was infectious, Tamara resolves, feeling for the residue in her eyes.

“Let it out,” Sammy whispered, holding her to his chest.

Tamara nods, closing her eyes.

Tamara wonders, staring at the Grim Reaper who stands in the forefront of her mind now. They remain separated by only the blackest of black, an alluring abyss that she fails to fall through. Tamara walks forward on the invisible platform, until she eyes the figure directly with the only gap distancing the two remaining in their height.

Looking at her again-and-again, Tamara tries to envision where her birthmarks lay–but her mind stops, and she can’t place them. Where was her tattoo—on the right or the left? She has the urge to run her fingers through those purple locks, and to kiss those battered cheeks and blisters.

“Would there be anyone to wipe your tears?” Tamara asks, resolute in getting an answer.

The hazy figure shakes her head, smiles, and rests her hand atop Tamara’s head.

Perhaps not.

Tamara opens her eyes, wide, in a daze. Almost as though on instinct, her mind cascades through where she was—what she would’ve been doing at the time of the incident.

Would she have been mindlessly ogling the TV to quit its tantrum whereas Maggie remained unperturbed with no such chance of entertainment? Would she have fallen asleep, lying in the security of her mattress as opposed to Maggie’s rock-hard bed?

In a moment of seclusion, she lands on the daunting detail: the calls. No—the probabilities were too slim. The timelines couldn’t possibly have matched up.

The risk seems too close for comfort.

Tamara screams. Escaping Sammy’s embrace, she flees, slams the door shut, and slumps behind. She feels the itch intensify, and it’s crawling all over her body asking to be numbed. She scratches her arms over—over—over again, but to no avail. It climbs up to her throat, tightening itself, restraining her.

“No, no—no!”

Help was always a few feet away, just out of reach.