Angels with Shotguns
Prologue
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Anyone who was actually paying attention to the sounds emanating from the cell would have heard the systematic pounding against the brick walls. It wasn't exactly a nice time of the day; it was the middle of the night and the prison was far too quiet for some people's liking, that one person being a twenty-seven year old man who was facing the wall and punching the same dent in the brick again, and again, and again. He wasn't the only one in the cell. His cellmate was blissfully asleep and ignorant of the strange routine he'd gotten into.
The next thing that happened was the kicks. They started off irregular as he got his footing on the cold stone floor, but they, too, eventually developed into a rhythm that started to frustrate the guards pacing outside the cells on the night duty. They endured it for a while but when the sounds got louder as the kicks became more advanced, one of them stopped outside the metal door and banged on it furiously.
"Could you keep it down in there? Seriously, some people actually want sleep! If you're awake at least keep it quiet!"
The noises ceased and the guard nodded in satisfaction, moving on to his continuous walking and guarding, thinking about irrelevant things that he would be doing once he got off his shift. Nothing too important, not really.
The man in the cell sat back down on his bed with a sigh. He was so bored. He couldn't sleep, not because the bed was uncomfortable or anything as small as that – he was used to things being uncomfortable, really – but simply because he just couldn't sleep. His family had been on his mind for a long time now, and he figured that it had been leaking into his dreams, into his nightmares. It wasn't because he would be seeing them soon – oh no, he had a good few years until he got out of this place, for sure – but it was more because he was reflecting on his life and wishing he hadn't screwed up so bad. But it was too late now, for that. No point in self-pity. He just hadn't killed the right person.
He laid back down on the bunk and attempted a hand at sleeping, but after tossing and turning with his eyes closed for at least half an hour and nothing coming of it, he got himself back off the hard mattress and stood in the middle of the cell, as small as it was and trying his best to avoid hitting his cellmate in the face with a punch or kick, launched himself into a series of movements, all martial arts, that made no noise whatsoever, and although it frustrated him to do so, he didn't make the signature sounds that he was supposed to make in the form apart from the small huffs of breath that he made when he supposedly hit someone.
He did this for a good hour, just going through plenty of different movements and avoided making too much noise so nobody noticed, but although he was exhausted physically, he simply knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. It was a silly thing to say, but he was afraid of sleeping. Nightmares had become all too frequent lately, all with the same things that he couldn't bear to sleep through, although he knew that the reason they came was because he brooded far too much. The problem that he had with thinking about the people he hadn't helped, the people he had betrayed when he could have done something to make a difference.
In short, Peter Blacker was a dipshit.
That would have been what his siblings would have said. What they did say about him. He hadn't seen them for nearly nine years now, some of them even longer because one had disappeared, one had run away and one was simply lost. He hadn't seen his youngest sister since he was eighteen, since he left home. That was the sibling he regretted not helping the most, because he was one of the ones who could have and should have helped her. What is she like now? he wondered. Was she happy? He hoped she was happy, with what she had, with what she didn't have to deal with any longer. Knowing her, she was angry, angry with life and everything. But she was probably the one with a boyfriend, right? She had to have had a boyfriend. What about that boy she used to hang out with?
His memory was becoming dodgy. He could barely remember faces anymore, couldn't remember what the outside world was like. The greyness of the cell had started to affect him. The claustrophobic-inducing walls, the small space, the rare amounts of light they got unless they were outside working or exercising or something of the like, all of it was starting to get to him and make him yearn for home.
But home didn't exist, not anymore. Whatever had happened to his flat was beyond him, it had probably been given to someone else since he was arrested and imprisoned, most of his possessions locked away somewhere besides the few small things he was allowed to take with him, nothing that seemed too important but meant the world to him. His black belt, a few photos, and a little empty book he had intended to keep as a diary years back, never got around to it, and still hadn't, but there was something about the book that made him desperate not to let go of it.
It was nearly five AM now. Breakfast wasn't for another two hours at the maximum, but Peter didn't want to stay awake for that long. He would just continue to be bored and go through the same motions again and again until he was dripping with sweat. He laid back on the bunk, facing the blank ceiling above him with his hands folded across his chest. There was nothing he could do now.
It was too late.