But, Above All Else, He Is A Reliable Narrator

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 2 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My prompt: If you could just blink your eyes, right now, and be anywhere, where would you be?

It was submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

_______________________________

"and...well...if she had known the outcome of that fateful balmy, southern afternoon, she might have allowed herself that one last slice of banana bread. After all, what could it hurt? But as it stood, she would end up wishing she could blink her eyes and be anywhere else on a terribly empty stomach. Or so the contents of her stomach would later tell us."

I was just brushing my teeth, man. That was it. I was brushing my teeth when I heard Keith Morrison--YES THAT KEITH MORRISON OF DATELINE AND MURDER FAME--narrating my day. Who else could get away with remarks so closely balanced on the border between rather morbid and nightmarishly macabre? It's that damn voice. Keith Morrison lulls us into accepting this elderly distinguished gent in his little blazers while black eyeliner, sleeping in a coffin, and teased hair goth are at his very core. The man has The Cure running in his veins. He looks like the nice neighbor who waters his flowers every morning at 7 am and gives out full size bars at Halloween but sounds like a man in spikes and doom boots who drives a hearse to work. Vincent Price in soul and dapper, gentle Grandpa in form. And now I could hear him discussing every step of my day.

When I was choosing what I might wear that day he talked about very weird details of my childhood. My mom apparently said I loved catching bugs and studying them, but I'm pretty sure that was only 2 weeks in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. My dad called me the light of his life which is rich considering just last year he asked me why I had to make him look bad with all his friends when I got a tattoo of Benson from Regular Show in that old Burt Reynolds Playgirl pose. But listen that thing was amazing. Either way I was the queer Black Sheep™ of the family, and my brother was definitely the golden child, so this all from my dad came as news to me. I mean, at some points I found myself listening in like I'd done with true crime podcasts over and again including the one with audio of old datelines...it couldn't be about me but it was. The details were just enough for me to recognize the truth while also wondering what the fuck these people who criticized and hurt and bullied thought they were up to talking about me like this. I could hear Keith talking about my best friend while I made my lunch for the day and got everything together for work and wouldn't you know this bitch I hadn't talked to since school after she called me fat and ugly and weird pushed me down and made me break my thumb was CRYING. crying! I was completely unaware I was so important in her life considering we hadn't talked for like 20 years.

Fucking people.

And then I think maybe the coffee hit and I realized either I had completely lost touch with reality and I needed to see someone or I was about to get murdered. And I really needed to figure that out urgently because I did absolutely not want to blink and wish I was anywhere else but there on an empty stomach later that afternoon as Keith, yes we're on a first name basis now, had so described.

I went back at the last minute and ate 2 slices of banana bread. Fuck fate. Or, well, fuck dateline. Same difference here really. And it was the best banana bread I've ever made.

So I'm here at work. No one can here Keith narrating my life story. But apparently I'm also not acting weird enough for anyone to be concerned, so it must not be a hallucination entirely? I don't know. Maybe it's Keith's calming voice keeping me straight. Would people be reacting to me differently if this was like Nancy Grace or those loud assholes from Last Podcast on the Left? It makes good sense that my brain would pick Keith for a hallucination though you know? But hallucinations generally aren't logical choices right? I dont know. I just know that Keith keeps saying I don't know that this is my last day at work and wouldn't I, if I knew, want to blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere else. And I mean yes but that's not helpful really since I now know this might be my last day on earth, and I can't actually blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere but here. It's like rubbing rock salt in a very open wound, Keith.

The end of the work day is coming up and since apparently I never make it back home to the banana bread I wasn't supposed to eat, whatever happens must be happening soon. I had no plans but going straight home once I clock out here. So I don't know. Do I leave? Do I stay and try to circumvent this, this thing ....my murder?

If Im honest I think if I actually could blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere else I'd just want to go hang out with my little sister and watch golden girls...but what if that's what I'm supposed to do and then we both die? So what I'm gonna do instead is hang out here at work. I know the night janitor. He's a pretty nice guy, and he said he wouldn't mind if I just stayed. He even said he had a cot down in the basement I could use if I wanted to go down there later, so that's what I'm going to do. That'll probably be fine, right?

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Don't Open

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words are:

cerebral ~ exorcise ~ mortgage ~ savory ~ terrain

They were submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

I'm not sure if I will or won't write more... Enjoy! CW for creepy Halloween and violence 

Crime and Crime Again

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

neon light ~ live stream ~ Criminal Minds ~ BAU ~ chicken and dumpling

It was submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

The Case

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

I've been listening to true crime podcasts so blame that haha

                   _____________________

Shannon paced in front of the whiteboard/corkboard in her home office. Her dark hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head and not the intentional kind. It was a mass of tousled knots that didn't even register on her radar of concerns. If pressed, she wouldnt have any idea how long it had been since she last brushed it.

But she could tell you every known detail of the last night she spent with her cousin Emily 6 years and 5 days ago.

Emily had been murdered. Another statistic of violence against women, unsolved, a cold case, another national tragedy so said the headlines that dwindled day after day with no answers until literally everyone had forgotten her. She'd even asked around the campus she disappeared from out of curiosity around the year 5 mark, and not a single person could remember who Emily was.

A nameless, faceless statistic.

Not even a body or a grave site or an urn of ashes to show for her life. She'd never been found.

Emily and Shannon had grown up together. They were roughly the same age, and thanks to Shannon's dad being out of the picture and her mom struggling with addiction, she'd spent more of her childhood years staying at her aunt's house sharing a room, the top bunk specifically, with Emily than she had with her own mom. She thought of Emily as a sister. Probably closer than most sisters since Shannon had been so grateful for the love her extended family had shown and Emily had been so understanding and patient that they'd rarely fought.

Her entire world imploded when Emily went missing. And the guilt that still pressed on her like a weight 6 years and 5 days later because she was with her that day and chose to do her own thing was an unstoppable force. She hadn't been able to let it go for a single second not even when the police let it go cold, not when the headlines stopped appearing even on yearly anniversaries, not when locals couldn't even remember who Emily was or what happened... Shannon would never--could never--let her go.

So here she was retracing everything she knew, every report from the only private investigator her family had been able to afford, and all the files she'd gotten her hands on once she got her own P.I. license at 24. She did small town bullshit cases to pay the bills and spent far too much of the rest of her time looking for Emily's killer.

She was 27 now. She hadn't ever had a real relationship. No one could handle how much time she spent on the case or the anger she felt, the shortness of her temper, and the lack of patience she had for people who didn't understand why she was so afraid of the world.

Back to the case, the facts, the pieces, the things she could focus on instead of herself.

Emily was 20 when she disappeared.

She was finishing up her sophmore year at University of Georgia in Athens.

She wasn't dating anyone. No one had any drama with her according to the many, many people interviewed.

On the night she disappeared January 20th, Shannon had gone to Athens to see Shakey Graves play. She was 21 herself and had been with Emily almost the entire day. She spent the night in Emily's dorm on the night of the 19th after getting to North Georgia from their hometown in Valdosta pretty late. It was a long drive, and Emily had stayed on the phone with her the last hour to keep her awake. The two had done some shopping earlier in the day then ate dinner at a small bbq place. No one acted weird, approached them in any way, or--as far as she could tell--followed them back to the dorm.

When Shannon left for her concert, Emily had plans with friends to go to a home basketball game. It was actually a pretty big deal because of impending March madness. This win could give the Bulldogs some kind of direct spot to the March Madness tournament.

6 years later and Shannon still didn't understand basketball well.

The point being that lots of folks were in from out of town on top of the other basketball team from Florida State and all their staff. Every single player at that game had been cleared however. Each of their whereabouts after the game and the following day were accounted for. But with so many people being in town for this game, various concerts including the one Shannon attended, and several other events, the police had given up on finding the person. The Stegeman Coliseum,where the basketball game was held, seats over 10,000 people alone.

Shannon had grown a bit cynical. She knew the police put forth some kind of effort. They checked out the team, for example. But it never made national news. Athens' economy depended on these games, the team, tourists for the music scene, and the university. Scaring people off with a dead student wasn't something the city was willing to do. They had leads. they had people they'd eliminated. But making the kind of deal out of it that was needed was never undertaken.

Back to the facts, the timeline, the logic.

The city had been inundated with outsiders for days prior and after the 20th.

When Emily hadn't shown up to the dorm that night to let Shannon in after the concert, when Shannon finally found Emily's roommate who hadn't seen her since she left for the game, and couldn't get Emily on the phone by call or text, she called Mama Leena. Emily's mom. Basically her own mom. Leena immediately hopped in her car when she couldn't get Emily either. It wasn't like her not to check in or answer a call or text even if she had been with a boy. She would have text Shannon at her concert to let her know not to wait up. She would have left her a way to get in or made arrangements for her to stay with a friend. And in all honesty even though the police never bought it, Shannon knew even then that Emily wouldn't have gone off with a guy with Shannon up there for the weekend. They never got to spend time together at that point, and any time the two of them did manage to get together, it was about quality sister time as much as possible. No one night stand would have gotten in the way of staying up late, talking, and watching shitty B horror movies as was always their tradition. And Emily hadn't really been interested in anyone. Shannon thought she might have been gay. Or asexual. But she didn't press. Emily wasn't a one night stand kind of person. She wasn't into romance or dating. She barely had crushes on celebrities. It stood out. But police see college aged girls as being a certain way, and they never accepted any other description preferring to hold on to their sexist stereotypes.

She kept getting lost in the memories. That was always the trouble. There wasn't one time in all of these 6 years that going through this thin stack of information didn't take her on scattered train of memories and feelings and facts all at once.

Given Emily was over 18, the police wouldn't do anything until she didn't turn up the next day. So by the time they were finally called again to come take a report, Shannon and Leena had already put together much of Emily's night.

She had definitely gone to the game. She had seats with 2 of her good girl friends at school, Alaina and Marcella. Their boyfriends attended too but met the group of girls there. All of their stories checked out. After the game they had gone out for a bite to eat, but Emily had chosen to stay behind and walk the half a mile back to her dorm so she could clean up and be ready for Shannon to get back. Even with this explanation, the police had assumed Emily had changed her mind. It was one of those big things that really held the investigation up.

The only other person these friends saw Emily talk to was a guy in a green shirt with an Irish sounding name like Seamus. None of these friends knew him from school, but they hadn't really paid much attention to the conversation. He had the seat beside her, and he had talked to her quite a bit even celebrating with her when Georgia would score so he had to at least be a home team fan. Alaina was closest and said it seemed a bit flirty on his side, and Emily seemed shy but maybe interested? Shannon has always considered this piece of information a bit biased. When any of her closer friend group spoke of her in the days after her disappearance they discussed their concern that she didn't date, that she wasn't getting out there and trying, that she was happy but they felt like she was missing something.

But that was just Emily. The idea that a young woman on her own for the first time in life, going to college, working a part time job at the library, who had a good family could be happy without dating should have been more normalized. Maybe the police would have seen the comments for what they were and not make so many suggestions about Emily running off. Fuck them.

Of course Shannon had spent most of her adult life single too. She sat at her desk and pulled at her messy hair. Her cat Simon the orange destroyer jumped in her lap purring. She joked his was the only male attention she needed, but that wasn't true. Something in her own life was missing, but no one ever seemed to understand her need to figure this out.

She didn't even know how she felt about justice anymore or the system. It had failed Emily so hard. She just wanted to know where her sister's body was. She wanted to be able to say goodbye. To bury her.

Emily had last been seen on CCTV footage in the coliseum and leaving it with this tall red headed kid. Green shirt. Maybe he had offered to walk her back to her dorm, but none of the CCTV cameras outside the dorms she would have passed before getting to her own picked her up. In a less than half a mile walk, Emily was gone. The police assumed she ran off with the boy, but that just wasn't Emily, and even when her clothes turned up a few blocks from the dorms, the police still shrugged their shoulders and said there were too many folks and that chances were slim. Shannon's heart was broken in pieces, and her family had never been the same.

No one had ever identified or tracked down this guy, but tomorrow might bring answers or at least open the door for them. Shannon got up again and packed all the pieces of Emily's disappearance. Tomorrow she was going on a little podcast that did deep dives in cold cases. Maybe someone would recognize the CCTV photos of this person or had been there that night and seen him or Emily or them together.

Every time she got her hopes up, she came away worse than ever before, but her love for Emily knew no ends. Hope would never die.

___________________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/03/wheres-quilt-use-your-words.html

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2020/03/impish-shenanigans-uyw-march.html

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2020/03/gwens-turn.html

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/03/use-your-words-hard-feelings.html

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Where's the Justice?

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 9 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.


My “Secret Subject” is:

“How could this happen..?”

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/


I recently picked up a new person (in prison) to write. His case astonished me to be perfectly honest which has not happened too often in my 11 years of doing this, and when I got this prompt, it felt a lot like I was meant to write about it. A few informative links will follow

______________________________

How could this happen? is something I asked myself over and over again when I read about Ivan Bechtol and why he's in prison for life. At 38, he's been in almost as long as he was ever free, and there's only a slight illumination at the end of his tunnel that might be a sunlit meadow of freedom or might be the tunnel on fucking fire trapping him inside for eternity. The way his life is going I imagine he feels more inclined to believe the latter.

When Ivan was 19, he was using cocaine on top of the usual substances a lot of people that age enjoy. He was actually with a local coke dealer in the wee hours of September 3rd, 2001. Those hours he spent with this dealer would be his unending in a wild tale that reads more like a poorly written whodunit than an actual, believable criminal investigation.

In those early hours on September 3rd, the dealer, William Cron (with a history of sex crimes and drug dealing), stopped the vehicle that he and Ivan were in at the house where Cron's ex-girlfriend was staying with another male companion. Apparently, Jamie Moran, the ex and victim in this case, had gotten some coke from Cron earlier. He fronted it on the promise she would pay him later with the money she got from selling some on her own. After a night of  doing drugs and drinking himself, he became paranoid she wouldn't pay because he owed *her* money and decided to track her down. Ivan had gotten a ride with him when Cron decided to stop by where he figured Moran would be staying.

Cron got lucky with his guess. It just wasn't very lucky for anyone else involved.

Cron cut the phone lines to the house and broke in leaving Ivan in his vehicle. The owner of the house, Ira Henke, heard a dog bark around 6:30 a.m. He went to check and found Cron inside the house, and the two got into a fight. Ivan heard the commotion, ran in, and broke up the fight. Ivan and Cron ran out.

The next morning, Ivan was arrested on a home invasion charge over this incident. He spent most of the rest of the day in a jail cell. Cron, however, managed to slip the police and spent most of his day terrorizing Jamie Moran. He found her new cell phone number and called repeatedly to threaten her at her job. The police were called but didn't find him nearby and left with matters unsolved. Jamie had a friend follow her part of the way home to make sure she wasn't being followed. The intersection where they parted ways was the last time Jamie was ever seen alive.

Not long after leaving her, the friend made a call to check on her and heard screaming. Her body was found in her car in a lake the next morning at 7 a.m.

It has never been disputed that Cron killed her. In his trial, it was indicated that he hid in her trunk wearing a disguise and forced her to pull over. He was physically 100% responsible for her death. No one else was there. He even forced her to write letters clearing him of crimes he committed against her and left them on her body...

That should be where the story ends for Ivan--with maybe a little time served for a home invasion he wasn't really responsible for and a wake up call about the friends he chose to hang around. Instead, he might very well spend the rest of his life in prison. Shortly after Jamie Moran's murder, he was picked up and charged with helping to plot it and hasn't been home since.

At Cron's trial, Ivan's involvement was never an aspect on either side of the case. In fact, Ivan was hardly mentioned at all and certainly was not discussed as playing any part the planning of or execution of the murder. At no time did conspiring with another person even get discussed at that murder trial. Cron was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with there being no doubt about his sole involvement in the murder. It was called a crime of passion.

Ivan's trial involved a completely different timeline, motive, and story. Instead of the straightforward timeline involved in Cron's trial, he was accused of somehow, even with spending most of the day until well into the afternoon in a jail cell, conspiring with Cron to kill Moran to keep her from going to the police about his use of drugs even though she had been using drugs herself. The only real evidence against him beyond his presence when Cron broke into Menke's house to find Moran was the testimony of a jailhouse informant who said Ivan told him he had been involved in a murder. This confession supposedly took place in jail after he was picked up on a DUI charge and because of that alleged confession, he never left. He's spent all of his adult life behind bars. 

That "witness" later recanted.

Let me pause here for a moment. Jailhouse informants are hardly what you might call a reliable witness. It has been proven time and again that many of these informants offer information in exchange for favors, reduced time, dropped charges or even payment or are pressured by attorneys or other authority figures to testify--even to lie. In multiple states, DAs have been proven to have rings of multiple informants. If the DA needs testimony to clinch a case, they simply place one of these informants in the same prison as the defendant, and suddenly there is a confession to help out, help win a conviction. At times, the informants themselves are completely fabricated in order to get warrants or help win a case in court. And while many of these cases are eventually thrown out because it is all lies and bullshit used to pad numbers and win elections, many more remain undetected.

That is very likely true of the informant in Ivan's case. When recanting later, this witness voluntarily offered an affidavit that stated he was coerced and pressured into making that statement by the prosecuting attorney. Ivan never told him anything at all about any murder which has been Ivan's consistent story for nearly two decades. Keep in mind that same prosecutor has already had one case overturned where it was determined he coerced a false confession.

At this point, pretty much all of Ivan's appeals have been exhausted. A recanted testimony alone does very little to sway the appellate court. At the appeals stage, a defendant is looking to prove the trial was unfair. Attacking the evidence used at the trial after the fact only works in the event forensic analysis obsolves the defendant of guilt or that new evidence (like the affidavit recanting the jailhouse confession) is enough to have changed the jury's mind. In this case, there's just not enough to attack, and the trial itself, even if utterly ridiculous, was conducted "fairly" under most interpretations of the law (in a fairly conservative state and certainly a diehard conservative area of the state).

At best, Ivan may be eligible for parole in 2029 when he is nearly 50--too old to start over and have children or live any semblance of a normal life. In letters, he apologizes frequently for being so withdrawn. He's forgotten how to connect to people well. Another 11 years inside isn't going to help him come home and be just fine not to mention he may not even be granted parole in the first place (though I hope to be as much of a help as possible in him getting it). He was effectively given a life sentence for a murder the court knows he had no physical involvement in, committed by, at best, a casual acquaintance at a time in his life when, as the entire field of psychology has proven, his brain was not yet fully developed. His decision making and impulse control at the very least were underdeveloped. Not to mention the way cocaine and alcohol use at such a young age added to that aspect of immaturity. The only thing he's guilty of is the same faulty decision making so many of us have at that age, and he surely doesn't deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison for it.

He did not kill anyone. That fact has never been disputed. He made some shitty choices about drugs and who he hung around, sure. But he wasn't even out of jail long enough to plan a murder that day. He wasn't involved, and there is absolutely no real proof he ever was. The prosecutor wanted another conviction and did whatever it took to get one.

In Ivan's trial, Ira Henke had the nerve to say Ivan is pretty much as guilty as Cron for having broken up the fight, that Henke could have held Cron until the police arrived, and Cron would have been in custody instead of free to murder Jamie Moran. The jury bought into that as much as anything else.

This is where our criminal justice system is at--sending people to prison for life often at a profit to multiple billion dollar industries based on no evidence, psychic predictions like Henke's, and the whims of overzealous prosecutors. Ivan isn't even the first for this particular prosecutor. How many more has he done this to? How often does this happen across the country? How have we gotten this far off the course of actual justice?

How could this happen and so many people not know?

How do we fix it?



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/opinion/sunday/texas-cracks-down-on-the-market-for-jailhouse-snitches.html


https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2010/jun/15/secret-justice-criminal-informants-and-americas-underground-legal-system/

http://fairpunishment.org/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/prosecutorial-misconduct-new-orleans-louisiana_n_3529891.html
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/13/dna-testing-michigan-courts/17056887/

__________________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/08/thats-wrap-secret-subject-swap.html

The Lieber Family Blog https://www.thelieberfamily.com/2018/08/the-hidden-room.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

Never Ever Give Up Hope https://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2018/08/secret-subject-swap-fly-vs-drag.html

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

My Brand of Crazy https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com

The Plan

“You’ve put me in a bit of a difficult position here, Ms. Fernandez.”

Simone looks at him a moment with a half smile curling the left side of her mouth upwards. She runs her olive-skinned fingers through her jet black hair being careful not to snag her expertly manicured nails in her waves and slides out of the maroon silk sheets to grab a hairbrush from the master bathroom.

“Are you back to calling me Ms. Fernandez so soon? What happened to ‘Simone’?”

Her back is turned away from him, but she can still feel his eyes roaming every inch of her naked body taking in the sights of the skin his mouth and hands had just finished exploring. She lingers there letting him look a little longer hoping to break a little of the resolve she heard in his voice. Surely a man this weak, a man that had given in to her, his boss’s wife, in less than 10 minutes, would cave with just the right amount of pressure.

“Well, Ms. Fernandez…”

“Jimmy, call me Simone. You’re naked in my bed. I think we can safely agree that at this point we should be on a first-name basis.”

“But..”

“No buts, Jimmy. Play nice and I might let you stay for a second round.”

She turns then tossing her hair back over her shoulder and makes her way slowly back to the bed. His pale blue eyes soften a little, and she knows she has him. A fly in her web. He licks his lips nervously, watching her climb back under the sheet. His hair had been pulled back and now fell in messy tangles around his shoulders. The sandy blonde beard that covered a portion of his cheeks and chin was a little patchy, but it disguised a weak jawline. He spent a little bit too much time in the gym for her tastes, but she liked the roughness of him. Her husband, Enrique, was a bit too meticulous about his looks. Too smooth, too polished and put together.

The fact that she hated him, her husband, probably didn’t help things either.

The two of them had been married since she was 19 and he was 22, roughly 17 years now. At that time, he was young and full of passion. He had goals. He wanted to open his own restaurant, cook the food himself, and keep things low-key and simple. They talked about having a small family and still living in the city so he wouldn’t have to commute to work. She would stay home with the kids, but they had agreed never to take each other for granted—he wouldn’t act like she didn’t work just because she was at home and she wouldn’t hold the fact that he always had to be at work against him. They had seen those very problems ruin marriages. Simone’s parents had succumbed to the very same ones themselves.

But nothing worked out like that. When he was 24 and still taking business classes at the local community college (the plan being to get his associates in business then go to culinary school), she worked at a Hooters type restaurant to help pay the bills. She would work to put him through school then they would start their family. The work was shitty. Customers always coming on to her, following her when she left, demanding her phone number. The store’s management wasn’t much help and told her it was par for the course. The tips were good though. She couldn’t make the kind of money they needed to get them through this without that job. So, she convinced the owner, Steven, to hire Enrique as a type of bouncer on weekend nights when the crowds were the worst. He would seat people, bus tables when needed, and if someone got out of hand, he would essentially kick their ass out. That was the nice way of putting it anyway. Enrique had a bit of a temper and was especially rough on the guys that put their hands on his wife. But, he built up a bit of camaraderie with all the women after awhile watching over them like a protective older brother. It didn’t take long for him to get a bit of a reputation. That’s when Adolfo Machado started coming in the club with some of his goons.

The first night, one of those goons took it upon himself to grab Simone’s ass. When Enrique tried to throw him out, the two got into one hell of a brawl which is exactly what Adolfo had wanted. That was his plan all along, and the thug on his payroll had acted on his orders when he made that ass grab. Adolfo wanted to see if Enrique lived up to the reputation. He did. Unfortunate, that.

At first it was just a fight here and there, underground fights that paid a few thousand dollars a pop—well more than she could make in a week’s time even on the best weeks, even when she flirted too hard for tips and overlooked the comments and the touching. She didn’t like, had told him she didn’t like it, but he always said it wasn’t a big deal, that they needed the money, and that it wouldn’t be forever.

All of that was a lie. It WAS a big deal. Anytime you get involved with someone like Adolfo Machado, it’s a big fucking deal. They didn’t need the money bad enough to get involved in shit like that. And here they are all these years later with Enrique entrenched with that man more than ever. Their entire lives revolved around Adolfo. What started out as a fight here and there turned into fight nights every weekend then bare knuckle fights once a month, then Enrique was traveling with Adolfo on jobs as protection, taking orders…doing things to people who owed money. She used to ask him questions about what exactly that meant, but he wouldn’t answer, didn’t want to involve her in what he knew. The risks to her life if she knew certain things wasn’t worth sharing those secrets.

So that’s how they lived. She was his wife, but she knew next to nothing about his life anymore. Enrique had risen up to be one of Adolfo’s most trusted. He was gone more than he was around, and when he was around, the two barely spoke. He mocked her when she asked for more of his time and told her if she was so unhappy she could find some other chump to buy her $2000 purses and $5000 gowns.

The man she fell in love with had gone a long time ago, the man who would have understood she would have been happy working every day beside him in a little sandwich shop making bread at 4 am and getting her hands dirty, coming home smelling like garlic and onions and grease. She wanted her Enrique not this stranger who came in, patronized her, then waltzed out to cater to one of the young women Adolfo provided or do God knows what on Adolfo’s orders.

The last time she packed her bags to leave, Enrique told her if she left, she was as good as dead. As far as she was concerned, she had no choice given that Adolfo, she was told, had been diagnosed with and advanced stage of pancreatic cancer and had chosen Enrique to take his place when he was gone. If she ever wanted a life of her own, Enrique had to go.

Simone snuggles up closer to Jimmy nearly purring in his ear about how good he makes her feel. She runs her hand along the smoothness of his chest enjoying it but knowing this charade is just a means to an end, her way out. All she had to do is convince Jimmy that taking out Enrique would earn him the top spot. It was just the distraction she needed to get out of there. She could clear enough money out of the account to set her up for a few months and leave the rest of this shit behind right.

“Jimmy?” she says.

“Yeah, Ms..I mean, Simone?”

“Why don’t you do more for the business? You seem like you should be the one running things, you know.”

_____________________________________________________________________

Well, I just finished up an Elmore Leonard novel which might have had a bit of influence on this piece. The prompt was Position. Thanks for stopping by for another Sunday Confession. Be sure to check out the other entries on the More Than Cheese and Beer blog

An InLinkz Link-up

The Interview

“I knew something was wrong for a long time, but I couldn’t admit it. Not out loud anyway.” She sighed, picked up another cigarette out of the pack sitting on the table in front of her, lit it, and took a deep drag sighing again as she exhaled a thick plume of smoke. She’d been chain-smoking since she got into the fluorescently-lit, cold interview room, but those were the first words she’d spoken. She stared at the two-way mirror on the wall across from where she sat. She wanted her observers to know she realized they were there.

She pushed her honey blonde hair behind her ear and leaned back in her chair. She was too thin and haggard, dark quarter moons punctuating her sunken eyes. It was obvious that something had been weighing on her for quite some time, but it wasn’t impossible to see that she was beautiful—high cheek bones, oceanic eyes, a creamy complexion with a button nose and a smattering of freckles across it that kept her looking young even though she was pushing 40 despite how worn she looked in those harsh lights wrapped in a thick cloud of her own smoke.

The bulbous detective seated across from her gave her a long, silent, sterile stare. It was intended to make her talk, but she was tough. She returned the stare with an unrivaled iciness that told everyone behind the mirror that she wasn’t putting up with any shit. Not today. Not here. Not from them.

He was the one to break the silence first. “What do you mean you knew something was wrong?”

She shook her head seeming both absolutely exhausted with all of this and amused at the question all at once and barked a short laugh.

“I know why I’m here and why you’re the one that’s ‘interviewing’ me instead of some young, fresh-faced guy with half as many wrinkles that hasn’t seen as many tragedies and still has some warmth left to his eyes. If it were that guy, I’d be getting the sympathetic ear of someone who understands I had no involvement in what my husband has done. But, it’s you in here with your stony glares, all attitude and demands and a face hardened by too many long nights dealing with dead kids beaten lifeless by their own parents and rape victims thrown out of cars and left for dead in ditch somewhere like their mothers’ worst nightmares come true. You sitting right there with your arms crossed and that grimace slashed across your face tell me that you already suspect I might have known all along and helped that piece of shit with his handiwork. Am I right?”

“Ma’am…”

“I’m right. You don’t even have to say it.” She blew the smoke from the last drag of her cigarette out the corner of her mouth, stubbed it out into the too full ashtray sitting in front of her, and immediately lit another one. She tapped the lighter over and over again on the surface of the table staring straight ahead, gaze never wavering.

He huffed and shifted his considerable weight on the chair, but he didn’t say anything. He stared her down yet again attempting to wait out her explanation.

More or less, it was a Mexican Standoff.

A half hour later, the rest of her cigarettes gone, she asked for another pack.

He huffed again but this time he leaned forward tapping his finger onto the table gruffly and stated matter-of-factly, “You can fucking forget it until you talk.”

“Listen, Porky, you can get me those cigarettes or we can sit here all fucking night. The choice is yours. And, I’d recommend, if I were you, sending them in with someone who isn’t such a dickwad because as long as you have the attitude you came in here with, you’re not getting shit from me.”

He sat back, red-faced. She figured if she spit in his face right then, it would sizzle, steam rising into the air above him. He grumbled unintelligibly under his breath but pushed his considerable weight out of the chair. His knees nearly gave out on him but he straightened up and made the short walk to the door slamming it behind him.

She looked around the room bouncing one knee needing another cigarette. She rarely smoked anymore, but she could not take this pressure right now without a nicotine rush. It would take forever to get the smell out of her hair. There was nothing remarkable about the four walls. A few paint chips. A spider web in one corner. The tile needed buffing. But all in all it was pretty depressingly whitewashed and bland. She supposed it was intentional to keep people from getting distracted or from distracting themselves anyway. The feeling of being watched wouldn’t change though even if there were a mural of fluffy bunnies and rainbows painted on the walls.

The door opened and a female detective with auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun waltzed in and sat the pack of cigarettes on the table between them before taking a seat. The detective pulled the chair in close to the table and gave her a long look. There was nothing assuming or pretentious in that look though which put her at ease a little.

“Listen, Mrs. Parker, we’ve got to make progress here. We’ve been here for hours. You’re tired. We’re tired. Can you please explain what you meant by your earlier statement that you knew what was going on but couldn’t admit it?”

“First of all, get it right, okay? Let’s set the record straight right now. I said I knew something was wrong. I did not ever say that I knew what was going on. Get it down. Record it. Make sure all those motherfuckers back behind the glass have it written down because this goes nowhere. No. Where. Until that’s straight. Got it?”

“Does that mean I can record this and you’ll give your written permission for that?”

“Sure, if that ensures you’ll get the story straight instead of screwing the shit up the way you assholes always do. Bring it out. Tape recorder. Video recorder. I don’t care. Do what you need to do.”

The detective turned abruptly to the mirror told them to set it up and made a hand motion. A young uniformed cop brought in a sheet of paper and sat it on the table. She took it and looked it over. “Give me a pen…”

The female detective obliged pulling a plain black bic ballpoint pen out of a pocket inside her blazer.

She took the pen, signed the paper with a huge superfluous signature.

“Thanks, Mrs. Parker. Now, why don’t we start from the beginning? What exactly is it that you couldn’t admit?”

Of course, this has been another edition of Sunday Confessions with More Than Cheese and Beer. The prompt this week was admit and since I'm so fucking obscenely candid on this blog at times, I have no real admissions to make so here's some fiction. Hope you enjoy and as always let me know what you think! 

Beat It. Or Her. Or Those Guys.

This year has been filled with news stories to read about celebrities that have made mistakes, grievous ones.

War Machine’s domestic assault/attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend

Resurfaced accusations against Woody Allen for molesting of Dylan Farrow

Alleged sexual assaults, so many assaults, by Bill Cosby dating back decades

Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges

Ray Rice knocking his then fiancé out cold

AC/DC’s drummer arrested for some kind of murder plot

The former drummer of Cake sentenced for child molestation

You can hardly go through a week without reading a story about a celebrity or politician who has or has potentially hurt others in some unimaginable way. But what do we do with this information once the heat has died and the sensationalism has passed on to the next story?

Not much, it seems.

Mark Wahlberg is one perfect example of our lack of concern for what celebrities have done in their pasts (and often in their presents). In his early life, he was in legal trouble at least 20-25 times. At 15 he was committing hate crimes against minority children including throwing rocks at kids on a field trip and calling them racial epithets. By 16 he graduated to attempted murder. In one day he beat a Vietnamese man with a wooden stick while yelling slurs at him then blinded another later that afternoon. For those two crimes, he served all of 45 days in prison despite the attempted murder charge. And that wasn’t the end of it. He got in trouble again years later for another unprovoked attack only this one wasn’t racially motivated like the others. In 2006 when these issues came to light, he stated publicly that he has done his time and has no guilt for his crimes. Even though he never even so much as apologized to the man he blinded for life, he recently applied for a full pardon for his crimes… A full pardon. Just let that sink in. In this country there are men serving life in prison for possession of marijuana in 3 strikes states, but Marky Mark wants his record to be wiped clean after serving basically no time in prison for a hate-driven, attempted murder, and let’s face it, it’ll happen because he has money and this country is addicted to celebrity-worship. He has acted in 44 roles and has been a producer 22 times since he nearly killed two men for being different. Currently, Wahlberg is worth approximately $200 million.

Perhaps the most ironic example comes from an expected place but not for the reason you’d guess. Audiophiles like myself can hardly conduct an internet search without seeing an ad for Beats

headphones by Dr. Dre. Did he pick this name because he beats women? I suppose Dee Barnes would agree with that statement. Barnes was a rapper in the hip-hop group Body & Soul going by the stage name D Zire. She also hosted a hip-hop themed show on Fox called Pump It Up! It was this hosting role that got her into hot water with the good Dr. She interviewed Ice Cube during the pinnacle of the financial issues between him and the other members of N.W.A. drawing Dre’s ire for making the group “look bad.” I suppose he didn’t understand they’d already made themselves look bad enough with no one’s help and decided the thing that would fix it all is to beat the ever-loving-fuck out of the woman while his bodyguard threatened anyone who tried to help her with his gun. I don’t mean that he simply punched her and was done not that it would make it any more excusable in if that were the case. He did, though, slam her head and body into a brick wall, attempt to throw her down a flight of stairs, kick her repeatedly in the ribs, then chase her down when she managed to run from him and proceed to punch her in the back of the head. His response and those of other N.W.A members was “bitch had it coming.” The court wasn’t too concerned either considering Dre spent no time in jail and had a petty fine and some probation time. Barnes sued but the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. I can’t look at a pair of Beats headphones the same. $169 a pair at the cheapest to line a man’s pockets who “beats” women when he doesn’t like what they say. Since selling Beats to Apple, Dre will be pretty close to billionaire territory with many pegging his net worth at nearly 800 million. He’s the richest man in the hip hop industry which is already rife with misogyny and violence much the way the film industry is and any other music genre and television and apparently the NFL as well.

I get that people aren’t their pasts. If that were true, I’d still be an angsty weirdo with a penchant for black lipstick and mainstream metal. Instead I’m just a weirdo. But the thing is…neither of these men feel any remorse for what they did. Dre nor Wahlberg ever really apologized to the people they hurt and instead feel like the world fucking owes them just because they had tough lives as kids. And we continue to fall for that shit. It’s not like Jay-Z stabbing a record executive for bootlegging his albums. Because apologized and wrote candidly in his memoirs about never wanting to get back to that place, to be the kind of person who would do such a thing. That, I can get. But why do we still continue to laud people like Marky Mark and Dr. Dre? Why do people continue to defend Cosby no matter how many women come forward? Why is that when someone we’ve watched in movies that we don’t know personally, that we’ve never met outside watching the characters they play does or has done something heinous, we’re far more forgiving that we are for people in real fucking life? Where’s the logic?

I’m sick of seeing Ray Rice apologists claiming that everything is fine now that he told his wife he’s sorry. All abusers say they’re sorry. It’s part of the cycle. Would you say that if it was a stranger who punched your sister, your mom, your daughter, your niece? Would you accept that apology as the truth every time right up until he kills her in a murder-suicide like many of these relationships end? I’m sick of people thinking that just because a woman didn’t step forward when she was raped, that she is no longer credible. I’ve been there. It’s hard to admit, to talk about… It’s even harder when every single person who hears your story picks it apart and finds a way to put the blame on you instead of where it belongs. I don’t want to hear that leaving lashes on a child’s leg is just punishment for being a child. If your son or daughter came home with those marks on their legs given by a parent that no longer lives with you, I doubt it’d be so fucking kosher as it is when a coveted football player has done it. I don’t want to hear reasons why Mark Wahlberg is different. I want to see him apologize. I want to see Dre fucking crawl on his hands and knees and beg forgiveness from that woman for being such a cowardly piece of shit. Where’s the fucking accountability with these people? Why the hell are we so worried about violence on tv and film and in songs when real violence is being perpetrated by the players themselves while we continue to worship them like patron saints of misogyny, entitlement, greed, and criminality?

If we’re going to read these stories about celebrities and get caught up in the drama of it all and get angry over their bad behaviors, we need to stop sweeping them under the rug when it’s no longer an interest piece on Huffpo or in Rolling Stone or on Slate. When the story isn’t top news on CNN, it’s quickly forgotten while these assholes are left to make millions, to become beloved icons, to be memorialized and idolized…while we’re left wondering why our culture is so often depraved, greedy,and violent. At least part of the answer is right there in the "news" stories we read.

As always, thanks for reading another edition of Sunday Confessions with More Than Cheese and Beer. Be sure to check out the other contributions. And a special thinks to a very talented friend of mine who recommended I tackle the Dr. Dre issue in writing. When I really started thinking about this week's prompt, I knew this was the right time to put my thoughts about that situation in print.

And since that talented friend is an artist, please check out some of his work here: http://instagram.com/santosian  He's amazing at what he does and one of the coolest dudes I know.