Read Online Kill the King by Eric Samson - Free Book Online Page B

home.

    ****

    It was well
into the darkest hours of the night but Tyler couldn’t find sleep.
Every toss was followed with a turn. Every bead of sweat was
followed by a cold shiver.
    The Block won’t
leave me alone.
    Tyler had never
learned to sleep while immured in the Block. It was one of the many
gifts of solitary confinement; the closet size. The whiff of piss
and shit that never dissipates. The cockroaches. The hot, stale air
in summer. The damp cold in winter. The lights that never shut off.
The months without seeing a ray of sunlight or a blade of grass.
The miserable, soul-crushing boredom.
    Yesterday,
today, and tomorrow were one and the same: nothing . That was
the Block’s cruelest gift of all. Outside your cell, the world
continued with its business and life went on with its ups and
downs. You simply no longer became a part of it. Time did not exist
when you lived in the void. All you had was the nothingness of the Block. It was the cruelest of masters.
    Tyler had
enough of losing the battle over sleep. The four walls of his small
bedroom felt too much like his old cell. He leapt to his feet and
angrily flipped the mattress over and unleashed a barrage of
punches to the closest wall his fists could reach. The pain
shooting through his knuckles only enraged him further. Gnashing
his teeth as hard as his jaw could keep shut, Tyler slammed his
head onto the wall for what must have been at least a dozen
times.
    “I’m not going
back. I’m not going back. I’m not going back!”
    Tyler rushed
out of his bedroom and made his way to the living room’s liquor
cabinet, naked and soaked with sweat. He emptied half the contents
of the tequila bottle down his throat while the other half splashed
onto his face and down his chest, mixing with the sweat before
dripping onto the hardwood floor.
    “I’m not going
back!”
    He said the
words out loud, as if he were speaking to the lingering spectre of
the Block itself.
    “I’m not going
back, you hear me? Huh? You hear me? I’m not going back. I’m not
going back!”
    Tyler closed
his eyes and vainly tried to regain his composure. His chest surged
and his temples throbbed. He hesitated to reopen his eyes, afraid
that he’d find himself in his cell again. He sat on the floor and
sobbed.
    “I don’t wanna
go back. I can’t go back.”
    Tyler lay on
his side, curled into a ball, and wept. He could feel his thighs
getting warm and wet.
    “Please. Please
don’t send me back. Please. . .”

DAY THREE

    “What the fuck,
man? You scared the shit out of me!”
    Khaled had
nearly dropped the barbell on his throat when Tyler’s face had
seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He grunted as he struggled to
bring the colossal load of iron back to its rack. The massive
weight secured away at last, Khaled lay on his bench to catch his
breath, his chest bulging and face drenched with sweat. He looked
up to find his friend’s dour face still staring at him from upside
down.
    “How did you
find my place? I only moved in six months ago.”
    “Marko told me.
You need to lock your doors, Khaled. All these years and you still
don’t lock your doors.”
    Khaled got up
and wiped himself off with a towel before spraying an extravagant
amount of cologne all over his massive neck and torso. He posed in
front of his giant brass mirror and flexed his swollen muscles.
    “Like anyone
would be stupid enough to open my door and fuck with me.”
    “I just did, Khaled. I could have killed you right then and
there.”
    “Yeah,
whatever. How long you been here?”
    Tyler sipped
from a large green mug adorned with elegant Arabic script. “Enough
to make this in your kitchen while you were doing those last reps.
Good coffee by the way. . .tastes expensive.”
    The coffee
wasn’t the only thing in this place that was expensive. The duplex
itself looked unassuming enough from the outside, but from the
inside it was stacked to the ceiling with luxury items: several
large and immaculate sijjad