Freedom in Choice

Content warning: non-graphic descriptions of murder and suicide

Night and yet he is sweating. Cold sweat. The sweat you feel after ceasing some sort of exercise and thrusting your body into the fresher outdoor air. His shirt plastered against his back. The dirty orange light of a lone street lamp, flickering around a corner, illuminates the dry street under his feet and the bricks of a building on his left. The muted roar of a freeway far away, echoes in the cold night.

The circumstances in which Mallory finds himself in this situation don’t matter. What matters is the cold sweat on his back, the sleek revolver in his right hand, and the man standing in front of him. Standing in what looks to be utter peace and calm, yet if you look closer at the lines of his face, you see indescribable terror. The corner of his right lip twitches. The man is frozen in fear.

Silence. Although the air is lukewarm, a faint breeze chills them both. Talking will help neither of them. Mallory moves his thumb, edging back the safety. The man’s eyes flicker and he stumbles in place, his knees weak. Mallory’s face is set, mouth grim. The street lamp flickers again, darkness for a split second. The man lunges towards Mallory without a sound except for the shuffling of feet and the shifting of cloth. Too late. A muzzle flash lights the split second of darkness. The man collapses toward Mallory, weak knees snapping into a pose of shoddy genuflection before his upper body crumples forwards. Dead on the dry concrete, his hand lies an inch from Mallory’s boot. The hand makes a comically loud slap on the pavement. The sparse light draws stark and eerie shadows across the dead man’s leather jacket, his jeans.

The gun slips from Mallory’s hand. Clatters on the ground by his boot, by the dead man’s flat hand. This isn’t a good place, and he thinks he can already hear the sirens in his ears, piercing a soundless night. He looks at his own hands. Calloused, dry, but clean. And yet they are bloodied again. A smile flutters across his face.

“Mr. Dugal?” A wavering voice scraped through a cracked cell phone, “Are you there? Connley Dugal?”

Driving across the open road, the day was hot and humid with a cloudless sky. In the distance, the sun shone across what could be a solar farm or a greenhouse. The blue Toyota was the only vehicle on the highway, other than a shipping truck about a mile ahead. An air freshener hung under the rearview mirror. In the bed of the truck were various pieces of equipment and a few two-by-four planks. An old radio was set into the center console and below that a cassette player Connley has never used. Slivered open, air roared along the outsides of the rapid vehicle through the driver-side window.

One hand on the wheel, still looking forward, Connley picked up the phone with the stranger blathering through the crackling speaker. He brought the phone to the side of his head, “Las Piedras Police Department, it's about your brother.”

And like that, Connley knew Mallory had reached the end of the line.

The Las Piedras Penitentiary was a compact place as far as prisons go. Despite this and having been built in 1967, it was secure as a lockbox at the bottom of the ocean. What Connley found strange was that they brought him right up to Mallory’s cell for the visit.

Mallory sat in the corner of his cell on the flimsy and uncomfortable bed. The bed hung from and could be folded onto the wall and there was also a toilet and a sink in the cell. A stool with a broken leg lay under the bed. The walls were concrete and a small window was set five feet high on the far wall. The air smelled dull and dusty, stale from the sun.

Connley sat on a wooden chair, outside the bars of the cell. The guard who led him here stood behind him. Mallory looked up, revealing his face, his pointed jaw, cheeks that hadn’t been shaved for a week, and his opaque blue eyes. His coal-colored hair was slicked back, at least as much as one could with only water. Other than the blue eyes, he was a blatant contrast from his brother, who had a solid, square face and chin with greying, streaked hair.

Connley looked at him and sighed. Sunlight filtered between the bars of the window, illuminating the motes of dust in the humid air. It created an atmosphere of golden light punctuated with particles, contrasting against the distinct concrete. You could see the small pores in the stone, the varying grey strata. On one wall something unreadable was scratched from a previous tenant but otherwise the walls were moderately clean. Mallory finally spoke, “Nice place, right?”

“What happened last night?”

“Oh, you damn well know what happened: I killed a man.”

“Why, Mallory? I haven’t seen you in five years since the first time you stole a life and I know you’ve been running ever since. Seems like it finally put you here.”

“Suuure did,” Mallory said, stretching the word and offering a crooked smile.

The next part of the month flew by. A trial in which Mallory did nothing to defend himself. Admitting to the murder, he was found guilty on that count and many others. Homicide primarily. A judge who had seen this all before and would see it all again. News in the papers the locals had seen before and would see again. As the mallet of the death sentence swung upon him, Mallory simply smiled his twisted grin.

Connley visited Mallory again, a week after the trial. He had been trying to avoid his brother as much as possible. He didn’t care at all for the creature he saw as Mallory. Why bother?

The guard led him to Mallory’s cell, like the last time. The cell looked nearly identical except the location was different. Mallory now had a cell on death row. Connley sat down in the wooden chair provided and the guard stood behind him, the same as his last visit a few weeks ago now. Thankfully, it was colder than last time, no sun filtered through the windows as it hadn’t yet crested over the high walls of rock on the east side of the penitentiary. He opened his mouth to speak but as he did, Mallory spoke, “Pretty empty in here, right?”

Connley was startled for a moment, “What do you mean?”

“Death row, yeah? Just me and two other guys. One of ‘em is in the row above me, prolly

asleep right now. Don’t think I’ll get much sleep here, the other guy, he’s down the row a bit, to your left, kept moanin’ and all in his sleep. The guards came in and tried to stop him a few times and ended up causin’ more noise than he was making.” Mallory let out a dry laugh, “Yup, us three in here, but I doubt I’ll have much time to know them or they’ll have much time to know me.”

Connley just stared at Mallory, wondering why he decided to tangle himself in this, and came to the conclusion that despite being the filth he now was, Mallory was still his brother, and like it or not, Connley had some sort of obligation to at least acknowledge what was happening.

Mallory continued, “I almost thought you wouldn’t come. But you did, and right in time. It’ll be happening real soon now. Then poof! No more Mallory!”

“You brought yourself here.”

“There ain’t nothin’ you could do to pull me out even if you wanted to.”

Connley began to stand up, growing tired of this nonsense already. He was a level-headed man but had little patience.

“Hey hey hey!” Mallory said as Connley began to turn away, “One last thing! You remember that Chinese place we went to way back in the day? You bring some of that for me, it’s what I’m gonna have for my last meal.”

“You want that?”

“Yup,” another crooked smile.

Connley shook his head and left the room.

Driving out of the parking lot, he remarked to himself how beautiful the rocky inclines around the building were. Scaling quite tall, stones of various colors, smoothed by the wind and heat, with the sun hiking above them, shedding light to create infinite shades and shadows. Truly marvelous.

Connley went home and lay in bed. He didn’t eat and drank nothing but a glass of seltzer water. He considered switching on the small television but concluded not to. The single bed squeaked as he rolled over on top of the covers.

As awful as he was, Mallory was his brother and was going to be smashed down for right or wrong under the law of the state of New Mexico and the United States of America. And for right or wrong there was nothing he could do.

Connley was an individual man. He was single, by choice he told himself. He had never been married. Connley worked a day job, average pay, good enough work. He talked little to his co-workers. He talked even less to his family as they were mostly dead. Neither Connley or Mallory had children and their parents had passed away years ago. Father first, then mother. Disease. They died in the same hospital, in rooms off of the same hallway. Only Connley was there when they died.

To fill the silence normally filled by the television and to distract his mind, he turned on the radio. Laying on his back, staring at a popcorn ceiling, Connley fell asleep to the sound of radio hosts and hip-hop.

He dreamed he was falling and upon waking, he knew his dreams had been pleasant.

The next day Connley picked up the food. Driving to the restaurant in the morning the air circled through the open windows of his truck. It smelled of freedom, of being able to run forever with the wind at your back and not ever be stopped. It even made the restaurant seem alright when he ordered the food, despite it being a pretty cheap place. He got the food and stepped out of the building. Connley was glad to be out, inside it was a pretty stuffy place, not much room. Yet outside, the wind rippling, the air seemed to crackle with how open it was. How free. He could do anything because he had the choice to do so. And yet he was only a man, standing outside a restaurant in the wind, with a white take-out box in his hands.

Connley brought the take-out to the penitentiary. The guards took it and later brought it to Mallory, he assumed. That evening Mallory was to be executed.

In his cell, Mallory lay horizontal on the most uncomfortable bed he’d ever slept in. The door opened and he sat up at the noise. Connley? No, a guard. But the guard was holding a plastic white take-out box. So Connley did go through with it. A small and dry laugh echoed out of his throat.

“Do I at least get to eat in some sort of cafeteria?” Mallory inquired.

The guard was unresponsive, slipping the box into the cell.

Mallory hopped off the bed and opened the box. Some crappy noodles, chicken, and some fortune cookies. That smile flashed across his face again. He could feel the wind.

An hour after, Connley went to the prison for a final meeting with Mallory. He supposed Mallory should get at least that before he was gone. He followed the same guard down the hallways and into death row. To an empty cell.

“It’s the next one, right?” Connley asked the guard.

The guard looked deeply startled, “N-no, this should be it…”

The cell was empty. The lock was still on, untouched, pristine. The concrete walls, smooth. The window, untampered. The runic scratches from a previous resident. The room was exactly how it should’ve been except for the most important thing, there was no Mallory. Motes of dust floated in the scarce, dusktime light.

The guard unlocked the cell and rushed in, inspecting the room and the impossibility of Mallory being gone. Had he vanished into thin air? Connley strolled toward something on the floor. The take-out box. He filled his lungs, the air smelling like it did earlier in the day. Completely eaten except for a singular fortune cookie. Connley grunted and picked it up, snapping it open. The instant he did, he was transported outside his body and in that instant knew he was viewing things from Mallory’s eyes.

Mallory was looking down on the prison from outside, from on top of the stones. Wind whipped his hair. He was impossibly free. He was covered in sweat, blood-like in the setting sun. It dripped from his fingers to the rocks below, leaving dark spots. The sun cast upon his statue-like face. Mallory held a fortune cookie in his hands. His hands were bloody, dusty, calloused, sweating.

They were physically dirty. Hands also stained by his conscience. And yet, to Mallory, they were clean. Because despite what he had done, what he was about to do, he was free. The crooked smile finally came across the stern face. He took a final last look at the prison and then snapped the cookie open with his bloody hands. Then the vision was gone. Vanished into thin air.

Connley’s consciousness was back in his own body, in the empty cell. He gasped. The guard didn’t seem to notice anything, still combing the room. Connley knew what had happened, what was happening. Destiny had forced Mallory’s hand, yet somehow Mallory still liberated himself. There was a single fortune cookie in his hands now. Connley broke it open and the dry material opened with a dull crack. Inside, a small strip of paper dirtied by a few crumbs. It was blank.

Mallory leaned forward from the stones. He had been destined to perish for his actions. Yet now he had a choice. A pebble loosened by his foot fell down, down, down the cliff, by gravitational force, a power almost as potent as the fate which drove Mallory. And yet, Mallory, to himself knew he was free. He began to slide forward, forward and off into the air. The wind flew by, free, open. Cartwheeling now, through the breeze, spinning. Seeing the sun, the prison, the beautiful, marvelous, natural stone wall. And feeling the wind.