Story code: ST-001025
Part 2: The Broken Chain
The heavy steel flashlight hovered at the apex of Martha’s swing, the momentum begging to be unleashed. But her muscles locked, freezing the weapon mid-air.
The hood had fallen away to reveal a boy. He could not have been older than sixteen.
He scrambled backward, his sneakers slipping on the linoleum, until his spine slammed into the peeling wallpaper of the narrow hall. He threw his arms over his face, curling his body into a tight, trembling ball. “I have it! I have it all, I swear to God!” his voice cracked, high-pitched and raw with adolescent terror. “Don’t tell him, please, I didn’t skim anything!”
Martha did not lower the flashlight. Her chest heaved, pulling in the stale, mildewed air of the duplex. She stared at the boy cowering on the floor. He was painfully thin, his collarbones jutting against the collar of a faded, oversized t-shirt. A patchwork of angry acne scarred his cheeks. He did not look like a murderer. He looked exactly like the teenagers who used to sit on her living room sofa, drinking her soda and playing video games with Tommy.
“Look at me,” Martha whispered. Her voice was a rusted blade, barely audible over the hum of the solitary corner lamp.
The boy peeked through his bruised, bitten fingernails. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and darting frantically from her face to the heavy aluminum cylinder gripped in her fist. He was hyperventilating, his thin chest rising and falling in sharp, jagged spasms.
“I don’t know you,” he choked out, pressing himself harder against the drywall as if trying to phase through it. “You’re not… you’re not from the car. Who are you?”
Martha took a slow step forward. The floorboards whined under her heavy boot. “Six months ago. Behind the bleachers at Westside High. A boy in a blue corduroy jacket. You handed him two blue pills.”
The boy’s frantic breathing hitched. Confusion washed over his terrified face, followed quickly by a dawn of horrifying comprehension. “I… I sell to a lot of kids at Westside. I don’t-”
“He was fifteen,” Martha cut in, her voice dropping an octave, solidifying into absolute ice. “His name was Tommy. He took what you gave him, he went to sleep on his bedroom floor, and his heart stopped beating. You killed my son.”
She stepped into his space and grabbed the front of his shirt with her free hand, hauling him halfway up the wall. The boy weighed almost nothing. He let out a strangled whimper, his hands weakly grabbing at her wrists.
“I didn’t know!” the boy sobbed, tears spilling over his eyelashes and cutting clean tracks through the grime on his face. “I swear on my life, lady, I don’t make them! I just move them! He makes us! If we don’t hit the quota, he…”
“He?” Martha pressed the cold, grooved barrel of the flashlight under the boy’s chin, forcing his head back against the wall. “The man in the silver Mercedes.”
“Yes! Yes, please!” The boy was openly weeping now, a pathetic, snot-nosed kid begging for his life in a rotting hallway. “He doesn’t even tell us his name. We just call him the Suit. He drops the bags, we bring him the cash on Fridays. If we’re short, or if we try to run, he sends the collectors. They broke my collarbone last month just for being fifty bucks light.”
Martha stared into his terrified eyes. The burning, singular focus that had kept her moving for half a year suddenly felt fractured, entirely inadequate. She had wanted a monster. She had wanted a demon with fangs and malice, someone she could beat into the linoleum until her grief finally subsided. Instead, the universe had handed her another broken, desperate child. The real monster was insulated by tinted glass, leather seats, and layers of disposable kids just like this one. If she crushed this boy’s skull right now, the silver Mercedes would just roll up to a different curb tomorrow night and hand a heavy black hoodie to someone else.
“Where is the cash?” Martha demanded, slightly easing the pressure of the flashlight.
“I don’t have it,” the boy gasped, struggling to catch his breath. “I just picked up the new drop. I haven’t sold it yet. The cash drop isn’t until…”
He froze. His bloodshot eyes went wide, fixing on the dark rectangle of the open doorway behind her.
Martha heard it a second later. The heavy crunch of gravel and dead crabgrass. A vehicle was rolling to a stop directly in front of the duplex. It wasn’t the smooth, barely-there hum of the Mercedes. It sounded like a heavy-duty truck, idling with a deep, rattling bass that vibrated through the floorboards.
“No, no, no,” the boy whispered, the color draining from his face until he looked like a corpse. He looked wildly around the cramped hallway. “It’s Thursday. It’s Thursday, why are they here? They’re early.”
“Who?” Martha snapped, tightening her grip on his shirt.
“The collectors,” he breathed, utter despair rotting his voice. “They sweep the houses when somebody owes from last week. I thought I had until tomorrow to make it up. They’re here to clear my debt.”
Two heavy doors slammed shut outside, the sound ringing out like gunshots in the quiet neighborhood.
Martha looked back at the shattered doorframe. The wood was splintered into jagged teeth; the heavy front door itself hung at a useless, crooked angle on a single bent hinge. It could not be closed. It could not be locked.
Heavy, measured footsteps hit the bottom step of the porch. The wood groaned under substantial weight.
Martha released the boy. He slumped to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest, paralyzed by fear. She looked down at the flashlight in her hand. It was a heavy, brutal tool, meant for surprising a street dealer in the dark. It was entirely inadequate for whatever was walking up those steps.
“Get up,” Martha hissed, grabbing him by the shoulder and hauling him toward the back of the hallway. “Where does the back door go?”
“Padlocked,” the boy whimpered, stumbling as she dragged him backward. “From the outside. The landlord…”
The heavy footsteps reached the porch landing. A shadow stretched across the threshold, cast by the streetlamp outside. It was long and broad, eclipsing the broken doorway entirely.
“Well,” a deep, grating voice called out from the porch. “Looks like somebody already knocked.”
Martha reached out and killed the corner lamp, plunging the hallway into pitch black. She pushed the boy behind her, raising the heavy flashlight in the dark, her heart hammering against her ribs as a high-powered beam of white light suddenly cut through the doorway, frantically searching the interior shadows.