Author's Notes: I warn you right now: this is not a happy story. It's dark and twisted and, basically, not an easy read (thank you to Vinyl for finding the right words for that, and for being her superb beta self). The rating is for violence and rape (again, not an easy read). Please take the time to review when you get to the end. If you saw this up last night and read it, I took it down because the formatting was off, but now it's all fixed. Any feedback (positive, negative, neutral, etc) satisfies me.
You Will Not See the Gates
I didn't do it.
They were the most natural words that stood by in his throat, always the most natural words, always waiting to be heard. He'd been saying them more often now. Saying them, yelling them, bellowing them, screaming until his voice was hoarse and his throat was raw. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. You have the wrong man. I'm innocent. I didn't do it.
so, he says, looking at her in the eye and smiling, wanna go for a walk?
she smiles, mistaking the feral glint in his eyes for animated energy, and accepts, with pleasure
A week ago they came to measure him. The whole thing was surreal, really. He felt like he was standing outside and watching as the tall, stocky man from the tailor's shop that he met once took a long string and measured him from head to toe. And then they put him on the scale and weighed him. He hoped he hadn't gained any weight since the beginning.
where are we going? she asks, her hands folded behind her back, a swing in her step
thought we'd go around and see the forest, maybe, he suggests. you know, that thin one on the outskirts of the mcnulty's ranch
he reaches out and touches her arm and smiles a gentle smile to reassure her she returns it and moves to kiss him briefly
They'd brought her in for testimony, brought her all the way from the city on the two day express train, just to stand in that stupid little box and talk. What a waste of train fare, he thought. They should have left her in New York with the rest of the whores he knew.
"How do you know Mr. Kelly?" asked the prosecutor. She told him. He asked again, "In the time you were involved with him, did Mr. Kelly ever try to harm you?"
"Objection!" His court-appointed lawyer was stupid. It had been his first impression, always making so many objections for no reason other than to waste time. He had read the case laws since then, to see just how much the average legal aide knew, and it proved that he was right, that his lawyer was indeed an idiot. "Prejudicial." Idiot.
"It establishes the pattern of violence, your Honor," the prosecutor cut in and explained, using his hands for emphasis.
"Overruled," the judge snapped, barely letting the prosecutor finish his explanation; the judge was obviously familiar with his defense's ignorance, and told the witness: "You may speak."
She averted her eyes and bit her lip, shaking. He smirked. His lawyer nudged him, signaling for him to refrain. He ignored him. "I…I can't."
"Your honor," said the prosecutor, "permission to treat the witness as hostile."
"He can't lead the witness, your honor," the defense balked.
"If that's an objection, Mr. Sanders, you're overruled," said the judge.
"Ms. Jacobs, isn't it true that when you were married to Mr. Kelly, he tried to strangle you?"
Sarah wrung her hands in her lap. " …yes…"
"Liar!" Jack bellowed from his seat. His lawyer glared at him. Shut up, idiot, he thought to himself. It's not like you're doing any good anyway.
"Mr. Sanders, you will keep your client under control!" the judge snapped, banging the gavel. The prosecutor smiled at Sarah.
"Why did he try to strangle you?"
Again she looked away and lowered her voice. "I refused to have relations with him."
He wanted to bellow again about how she was his wife, which meant she had to fuck when he wanted to, and if that didn't mean anything, well, she was just a whore to begin with. But Mr. Legal Aide dug his fingernails into his arm, stopping him. He knew that the only reason he did it was to avoid being fined for contempt of court.
as the sun sets they sit underneath a pair of cool, shaded trees and the ground is soft beneath them
her arms are draped over his shoulder and they're kissing again, and this time it's more frantic and fervent oh baby come on please? he murmurs as he slips a hand up her blouse and fumbles for her breast no one's gonna find us out here and don't you love me like i love you?
she looks away like the whores he knew always did and stop his hand through her blouse because oh i do like you a lot but this isn't the right place for it, you know what i mean?
"Were you hospitalized for your injuries?"
"Three weeks, sir."
"Thank you, Ms. Jacobs."
"Any questions, Mr. Sanders?" the judge asked.
His lawyer looked at him questioningly; Jack said nothing. He knew what he wanted.
"Ms. Jacobs," Mr. Sanders said, rising, "do you read the Bible?"
"Objection," the prosecutor said lazily. Cocky bastard.
"You'll see where I'm going with this, your Honor, I promise."
"I'll allow it," the judge said warily. "But be careful where you step. Answer the question, Ms. Jacobs."
"…yes…"
"Do you know what the Bible says about marriage?"
"Yes, sir..."
"It says a wife should be subordinate and obey her husband, isn't that correct, Ms. Jacobs?"
"Yes, sir…"
"So don't you think that your husband had the right to expect you to be intimate with him, because the Bible says you are supposed to obey him?"
he runs a hand through her hair and tugs on it a little too hard and apologizes immediately, saying it's an accident before leaning in for another kiss, his hands moving this time up her skirt, rubbing her thighs don't you want this, baby? and she replies by pulling away and looking down
please, don't, she whispers, her eyes looking heavy, don't touch me like that
you fucking tease, he growls, you wanted it before
i didn't realize what i was asking for please let's just go home
she sees the glint in his eye as feral now and realizes her error because she really didn't realize it
"Objection!" interrupted the prosecutor.
"Sustained," the judge replied, barking: "Mr. Sanders! You will not go down that path."
"Your Honor--"
"No, Mr. Sanders, I won't allow it in my courtroom." The judge was a cocky bastard too. Did he really think the courtroom had his name on it?
"I have no more questions, then, your Honor," he said grimly, sitting down. Jack hoped that was enough to shed the seeds of doubt in the jury. They understood what whores like those girls were reminiscent of.
he pulls her to him again and presses himself against her, his kisses now bruising and forceful and she's trying to squirm out of his grasp but it's not working the truth is that the contact and friction is only making him hotter for her and all that she can offer him
Her testimony was two weeks before the verdict.
she knows with painful consciousness, still writhing in vain in his thick, constricting arms, that she may not be going home tonight
Guilty. Those sons of bitches and their damned psychological blindness. How could they not see that he was only fulfilling what Nature -- and God -- said was his right?
he finally pins her to the ground as her limbs begin to yield to his tight grip and she turns her head to the side so she doesn't have to look at his face
he turns her head back so she looks right into his eyes and as he begins to hike her skirt up he warns her not to scream by clamping one hand over her mouth shhhhh baby it won't be so bad as long as you don't make a lot of noise
A few days ago the chaplain came to see him, but he never bothered to learn his name, just like how he never learned the judge's name or the prosecutor's name or the tailor's name or even the name of his neighbor when he lived in that little house a half mile from the McNulty's. Yet he had learned their name. Now he considered learning that a waste of time.
The chaplain came a few days ago to remind him that he was going to be executed on the twenty-fifth and that he should repent his sins if he wanted to be saved. It was the third time he had come to tell him this. It was the third time Jack refused.
"Please," the chaplain said, sitting next to Jack on his bed. "Don't you want to discuss the crime?"
"No."
"You killed a girl, Jack."
"I didn't."
"People saw you leave the restaurant she worked at with her."
"And I walked her home. What happened after that, I'm damned if I know. I told them -- the cops and the lawyers, I mean -- I don't like barmaids to begin with. Don't repeat my trial."
"You killed her," the chaplain said slowly. "But you raped her first."
"I didn't," he hissed.
he finds himself in her and she's crying, tears streaming down her cheeks, her sobs muffled against his hand, so he licks a few tears away and removes his improvised gag
she screams when he takes his hand away and he realizes that hey, she's got a nice scream and it's immediately become a sound he likes it's music to his ears so he whispers in hers won't you please scream some more, baby? but now she spits at him which really isn't the nice thing to do considering the circumstances so he gives her a hard smack across the face and hisses shut up, you little bitch and drives into her harder while she continues to cry
"God knows your sins, Jack. How did you get this way?"
"Don't call me by my first name." He didn't like it when they get personal like this. He liked to keep his distance. Watching the chaplain's face, he added, "please" to be safe. "And I don't care what God knows."
"Don't you care about where you'll go after you die?"
"No."
"Don't you want to see the shining gates of Heaven?"
"I don't care."
"Why not?"
"Because I'll be dead. Dead people don't need to worry about that kind of thing."
"What about the girl?" the chaplain pressed. "Where do you think she is now?"
"Santa Fe, maybe," he offered. "Instead of this Texas hellhole."
"Do you think her death is funny?" the chaplain demanded, still managing to hold a strange composure. It was the celibacy, Jack decided.
"No."
"Then why are you making jokes?"
"I told you, I didn't kill her. I didn't do it."
when he's done with her he pulls her skirt back down and tells her not to move or else she'll be sorry and as he takes the pack he brought with him and begins to sift through it she begins to worry
and when he pulls out a gleaming silver carving knife she once saw in his house and sees it shine in the fading light she gets so scared and starts to fumble her way weakly to the outskirts of the forest, hoping that she can get to the mcnultys and they can help her
The chaplain closed his eyes. Jack thought that maybe he was tired of looking at the world, the stained prison walls and discolored mattresses that he had grown so accustomed to over three months. But the chaplain merely sighed and rose.
"I may visit you again before your execution," he told Jack.
"I'd like that," Jack said.
The chaplain's face lit up with hope. "You would?"
"They already measured me for the rope, so no one else is gonna be visiting…having someone come by once in a while makes me remember I'm not the only one here."
The chaplain closed his eyes again, this time, Jack assumed, in irritation, and called for the guard. Let me out this hellhole too while you're at it, why don't you?
he sees her staggering away and realizes that too much has happened for her to go now so he buckles his pants and dashes after her, diving and grabbing her by the ankles a few yards from the edge
she threatens to scream but then she sees the knife in his hands and suddenly her voice is nowhere to be found, partially because he presses the knife to her throat with just enough pressure to hurt, not cut, as they go back to that spot under the shady pine trees
he makes her lie down again and she closes her legs, praying that he doesn't try to force himself into her this time too
When the chaplain was gone, he did his yelling, letting the other solitary inmates hear him declare his innocence as his voice bounced off the prison walls and flowed out through the barred windows. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. They laughed at him in the other cells, bellowing back. Me too, man. I didn't do it either. All of us here, we're innocent.
But his time was coming faster to a close than theirs was, so he immediately deemed his assertions more important and more truthful than theirs ever would be.
i told you not to run away, he tells her, this time straddling her clothed hips, i told you not to but she doesn't say anything so he presses the knife against her cheek you've been a bad bad bad girl and are you scared?
of course she is and she manages to nod good that's what i wanted to hear
he traces the edge of the blade along the side of her face, this time doing it hard enough to draw blood and she's crying and whimpering again he smiles and dips his tongue down again to taste the tears, this time mixing them with a tiny amount of blood and it's bitter and salty and metal-tasting but at the same time delicious
The chaplain came again. He sent him away without seeing him.
he uses the knife again but not on her skin just yet now he's using it to tear away her clothes and slash them to shreds around her and he uses a nice thick blue cotton scrap from her skirt to stuff her mouth with so there's a guarantee no one can hear her when she screams
when she's fully unclothed her garments in pieces around her body he sits again on her hips and makes looks right in his eyes and all that's there is fear, he thinks as he touches the tip of his knife to the space between her breasts
do you love me? he asks
she nods because she knows she has to, and he doesn't hesitate any longer
He stood on the platform and looked out to the prison yard under him. He hadn't really seen it like this before, so wide and open. He had expected the inmates to be out there, exercising and socializing and watching him, but instead he saw a strange group he did not recognize….except for the fucking pussy of a prosecutor and the equally weak judge. He didn't see the man who measured him, or the chaplain. He assumed that the others were family and friends of that little whore.
he rams the knife into her chest as if she's the christmas ham and rocks it back and forth to see how far it can be lodged into her, which he finds out, even though it doesn't come out the other side, is pretty damn far
The executioner was a thin man with empty patches on his head where scraggly brown hair was supposed to be. He made sure the knot was tight enough, and Jack noticed that the man who measured him was behind him too, helping the executioner get the length and tightness just right. He didn't know why they bothered to be so exact about it. At the measuring he had asked why, and they said that if they did it wrong, it could rip his head off or kill him slowly. They wanted it to be humane. But that was bullshit. Hanging someone was never humane.
when he removes it for the first time it's the same deep red as that one dress he once saw her wear and there's some tissue that looks like it might just be from her lungs on it, or maybe, if he's lucky, her heart
"Do you have any final words?" It was the warden who asked him that. He'd only seen his picture before. Seeing him in the flesh was strange. But at that time, it really wasn't the point.
Holding his head high, Jack replied, "I didn't do it."
Below, he could hear the men roar indignantly and the women sob inconsolably in response. He looked over the prison wall towards the horizon. They were letting him see the dawn, which, if he thought about it enough to care, was a nice sentiment. The chaplain probably talked them into it, yet he didn't feel bad that he really didn't give a damn about whether he got to see the sunrise or not.
he drives the knife in again, this time in her belly, slicing and dicing and feeling like the chefs in the kitchen of the restaurant where she worked and every time he pulls it off he studies it before going back to another limb
he does them with strange precision, chest and stomach first, then her arms, then her legs, cutting them all to reddened strips of skin that merely drape over bone, and finally he does her face too but not as bad as he did, say, her porcelain thighs which aren't exactly a china white anymore
The trapdoor snapped open so suddenly that he could barely feel himself begin the freefall.
he stands over her bloody body now, the flesh shredded to ribbons, and smiles, satisfied with his handiwork and how it looks in the sallow moonlight
Before the downward plunge stopped with a crisp, sudden snap of his neck, he thought he heard them cheer. He knew he wouldn't see the Gates, but like he told the chaplain, if he was dead, it didn't really matter.
he spits on the body like she did to him and, running a hand through his hair to check for muss, walks away, out of the forest, back into the night, towards home
I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it.