FEAR BECOMES HER
Raymond Francis
As gently as possible, Kelli lifted
her four year old baby boy Bryson from her bed, and slung his sleeping body
across her chest, while gently resting his precious head on her shoulder like
only a mother could do.
“You are getting heavy,” she
mumbled under her breath.
Bryson was a bit of a Momma’s boy
and although he had his own room, he preferred falling asleep next to Kelli.
Kelli carried her somewhat spoiled only child into his bedroom across the hall
and laid him gently down in the Transformer’s themed bed that he had
relentlessly begged and pleaded for last Christmas. Of course, she brushed his
dirty-blond hair back just a taste and placed a gentle peck on his ever-so
perfect forehead and then closed his door, leaving it cracked just a tad like
they both preferred.
Kelli sauntered back across the
hall, rubbing her olive complexioned arms together for warmth as a slight
breeze chilled her petite body. Utterly exhausted, Kelli glanced at her alarm
clock, while easing back under her tope colored sheets and began to mentally
calculate how many more hours of sleep she would be privileged to before hump-day
morning arrived.
It was 1:15, which meant Kelli
could get a full six hours of shuteye before having to wake and get Bryson
ready for the daycare. Then, she’d have to fight the notorious Philadelphia
Blue Route traffic to make it to the other side of town and punch into her time
clock by 9:00 AM at Finance First, the debt consolidation company that had
employed her for the past year. Of course, this was all contingent on her 1999
Mazda 626 starting up without incident. That car simply had a mind of its own,
and on some days, it just refused to do its job.
Kelli gave her pillow one last
fluff and then eased her weary head down onto it. She was satisfied; six hours
was about the average amount of sleep that Kelli had grown accustomed to during
the week. On the weekend however, Kelli somehow found the extra energy to stay
up half of the night scrolling through the dark, untapped areas of Netflix
hoping to find a classic indie film that only she was privy to have discovered.
It was like a scavenger hunt, and Kelli knew that there was an un-cheesy romantic
comedy somewhere within the Netflix library that would make her laugh, cry, and
reminiscence much like “The Sweetest
Thing” had done back in 2002. Only this time, Kelli’s find wouldn’t include
Cameron Diaz. Women like that were just a little too perfect and got no airtime
on Kelli’s 32 inch flat screen.
Nevertheless, dealing with traffic,
daycare, and a time clock that seemed to move ten times slower once employees
punched into it was all in a day’s work in the life of a single mother, which
was a life Kelli never quite pictured herself living. Back in her childhood Barbie
days, Ken was always there. He was usually naked and neglected; but he was
always there. Life in Barbie’s Dreamhouse trumped reality though, and Kelli and
Bryson were the only occupants under their roof. Due to an unfortunate incident
with Bryson’s father, Kelli was forced to be the sole provider for the two of
them. She received some sporadic assistance from her parents, but they were
dealing with their own financial issues and could only help so much.
Kelli was a strong woman though;
she considered herself a cross between a young Murphy Brown and a pre- Shiloh Angelina
Jolie. She was an office working, blazer and jeans wearing, modern woman who
could deliver life’s problems a fierce metaphorical dropkick if necessary.
Kelli was a strong-willed fighter, with composure and class, who had survived
her fair share of life’s trials and tribulations, but at the current moment all
she wanted to do was get a good night’s sleep.
Kelli pulled the covers up under her
chin like she always did, and snuggled down deep underneath the comfortable 300
thread count cotton sheets. Just as her baby blue eyes closed, the blaring ring
of her cell phone startled her. A ring coming from Kelli’s phone after 10 P.M.
was a rare occurrence. The bill collectors were forced to stop harassing people
at 8 P.M., according to federal law. Kelli’s parents shut off every electronic device
in their house when the second re-run of “Everybody Loves Raymond” ended, and Kelli
was short on actual speaking-term friends. The couple of friends that she had
were early risers like her, not night owls. She’d long abandoned all of her
bar-hopping cohorts who still preferred hiked-up miniskirts over pants suits that
might be drunk dialing her from a $2-a-shot South Street bar, so the ringing
phone baffled Kelli.
“What the hell?” whispered Kelli,
as she performed an awkward, half-spin, contortionist move, that she was way
too out of shape to be doing, in order to reach over to the nightstand where
her phone lie.
Kelli was determined to answer the phone
before it awakened Bryson. If her son awoke, her six hours of rest would be a
distant memory. Without even glancing at the smartphone, Kelli automatically swiped
the screen and answered the call. She was ready to provide whoever was calling
her at this time of night with quite an earful chock full of choice words that she’d
learned from the rough and tumble South Philly Italians whom she had been
raised amongst, but the voice on the other end of the phone spoke first.
“Please, help me! Help me, please.
You have to come help me,” a faint, voice whispered.
Then, just like that, the call ended
without Kelli even having a chance to respond.
Kelli did the quick ‘eye blink,
look around the room’ technique to confirm that she was indeed awake. It was
the equivalent of pinching oneself to confirm that they were not asleep. Kelli’s
mind was not playing tricks on her and she was not dreaming; the mysterious
call had really just happened!
Panicked, Kelli flipped her
nightstand lamp on and sat up straight in her full sized bed. She fumbled with
her phone until she pulled up her Received
Calls menu.
“Private number,” mumbled Kelli,
shaking her head and staring at the phone again.
Puzzled, Kelli ran her fingers
through her stringy, brown hair. There was no way to return a phone call from a
private number. Kelli didn’t even know what to make of the strange call that
had only lasted a few brief seconds. On one hand, she wanted to just ignore it
and finally get some much needed sleep. On the contrary, there was something
about that voice that she just couldn’t forget. The tone of the man speaking on
the other end of the phone was filled with such urgency. The man spoke with
panic and desperation, but all the while he was whispering.
“Why would he whisper if he was in trouble? Wouldn’t a scared person
scream? And why did he hang up?” pondered Kelli.
The situation was perplexing, but
one thing Kelli was certain of was that the call was no random prank or crank
call. The man’s voice was real, and the fear he spoke with was all too intense.
In her mind, Kelli had transformed the faint voice into an entire person; and
that person was in desperate need of help; but what could she do about it?
Chapter 2
“C’mom,
let us get 15 more minutes!” hollered a perturbed inmate at Edgefield Federal
Prison in South Carolina.
“I kept
the televisions on until 1:30 and ya’ll still want more? Never satisfied,”
responded the C.O., as he directed the remaining inmates from the common area
TV room and back to their 2-man cells.
Keeping
the television room open late night was a treat for the residents of the medium
security federal prison. It was a reward for 60 consecutive days without a
brawl, stabbing, or fist fight. 60 days may seem like a short amount of time,
but in the gladiator school that was Edgefield, it was an eternity.
“Wasn’t
nothin’ on but reruns anyway,” mumbled Nick to no one in particular, stifling
back a yawn as he headed toward the cluttered cell he had called home for the
past 14 months.
Nick Collangelo
was just over a year into a 12 year sentence stemming from his participation in
an armored truck heist. He was the type of inmate who was in the worst possible
position mentally. Unlike the prisoners who were five years in with forever to
go, Nick could still vividly remember what it was like to be free. For those
inmates who had forgotten when they came in and could hardly remember when they
were getting out; their time went by fast. After a while, those types of prisoners begin
to adapt to prison life. They had long forgotten just how juicy a rib-eye steak
off of a blazing hot grill could be, or just how soft a woman’s bare thigh felt
to the touch.
Nick
still remembered, though. It seemed like just yesterday when he was in South
Philadelphia with his girlfriend and young son, watching the Fourth of July
fireworks explode in the nighttime air down at Penn’s Landing. Unfortunately,
it had all gone downhill after that. A brilliant scheme to knock over a Brinks
truck in front of a First Union bank with a friend had gone awry, and the end
result was Nick winding up as property of the United States federal government.
Hollister sweatshirts and Sperry
boat shoes had been replaced by drab, light brown prison issue uniforms and unpolished
black boots. Movie nights and late afternoon fishing trips with his son had
become a distant memory for Nick. Instead, his life revolved around poker games
played for jailhouse currency and thinking of ways to barter for extra pork
chops or single patty cheeseburgers from the chow hall. It was quite a pitiful
transformation.
The
detectives that eventually busted Nick, after his frantic week on the run, knew
that he hadn’t acted alone. They offered him a deal to cooperate with their
investigation and rat out his accomplice. Snitching, as it was called, wasn’t
an option for Nick, however. Nick was from the heart of South Philly, which was
where most of the Italians residing in the City of Brotherly Love congregated. Nick
had uncles who were actually affiliated with Mob families whose bloodlines
stretched all the way back to the old country. He had cousins who were doing
life in prison, and a grandfather who had been killed as a result of the Mafioso
lifestyle that he had chosen to become a part of. Nick owed it to them not to
tell on his partner, so he took the 12 year sentence without ever shedding a
tear; at least not on the outside.
On the
inside, Nick was a broken man. Above all else, the Italians believed in family
and Nick had abandoned his for the next decade. He had left his son and his
son’s mother to fend for themselves, and that ate away at his soul every night that
he lied in his miniscule bunk bed thinking about it. Nick couldn’t laugh and
joke as nonchalantly as the other inmates did because he knew that he had
failed his family. To make matters even worse than the fact that he was removed
from their lives, Nick hadn’t even left them any money to survive with.
The robbery
that Nick had pulled was initially successful. It was a classic job, nothing
fancy. Two masked men, two guns, a getaway car, and two swap out cars a block
away. Nick and his accomplice ambushed the driver of the Brinks truck, drew their
“poop-your-pants-when-you-see-them” caliber automatic weapons, and forced him
to hand over the bags containing the money. Two and a half minutes later they
were fleeing the scene. Six minutes after that, they had split up and hopped into
different vehicles. The initial getaway car was set ablaze as a means of
destroying evidence and creating confusion.
From
there, the story gets fuzzy depending on who is telling it. Naturally, Nick remained
tight lipped about the money’s whereabouts, which obviously led to an
infuriated accomplice. The federal system monitors his letters and phone calls
waiting for a slip up, but Nick is far from stupid. He just keeps his mouth
shut and keeps his secret to himself. That’s the way his ancestors in the old
country would have done it.
“Hey, you
asleep celly?” asked Nick, as he nestled into his undersized, uncomfortable top
bunk.
Nick’s
question elicited no response, meaning either his cellmate was sleep, had his
headset on, or was not in the mood for any chit-chat. Either way, it didn’t
matter. Nick was ready for bed, and began performing his nightly routine. He
kicked off his socks, climbed into the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, and
then fluffed his pillow. Finally, he reached under his thin rubber mattress and
grabbed his favorite picture, then gently kissed it to his lips.
“Goodnight
Kelli, goodnight Bryson. I love you.” he said, just loud enough for himself to
hear.
Chapter 3
Kelli
rubbed her tiny hand across her eyes and held her head down, away from her desktop
work computer’s screen. She needed a few seconds to refocus her eyes, as all
the words on the screen were becoming one big blur to her. After the strange
phone call she had received the prior night, Kelli was unable to sleep a wink.
While some would have written the call off and gone about their business,
Kelli’s conscious didn’t allow her to react so nonchalantly. She knew that something
was wrong and she couldn’t live with herself peacefully like that.
Kelli
had even gone as far as searching online to see if there were any stories about
a man who had been involved in any trouble the previous night. Ultimately, her
search of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website provided no leads. Kelli wasn’t
sure if that was a good or bad thing. Whoever had called her apparently hadn’t
been hurt, but once again Kelli was back to square one. She couldn’t shake the
tone of fear in the mysterious man’s voice from her thoughts, and it was affecting
her work drastically.
Kelli
hadn’t convinced a single customer to purchase the financial service that she
was selling, and in a quota based work environment like hers, that was
essential to keeping her job. Without a job, Kelli didn’t know where she would
be. Her currently living situation could best be described as getting by, by
the skin of her teeth. Without any bonuses, Kelli grossed right at $2,400 a
month. Her car payment, insurance, rent, daycare, gas, water and electric bills
drained her down to a mere $40 leftover.
In Philadelphia, 40 bucks was a
cheesesteak, mozzarella fries, and some Coca-Cola’s for herself and Bryson. As
any Philadelphian knows, those were not treats, but rather essentials to make
it through an Eagles or Phillies game. These items could not be sacrificed.
Without a certain intake of the grease that could only be found on a Philly
cheesesteak, a woman was not living, but only existing, reasoned Kelli.
At 24 years old, with a child to
feed, Kelli would have been much better suited living with her parents back in
South Philly. There would be no shame in retreating to the confines of the home
a girl was raised in to save money. Half of the single mothers her age in the city
lived this way. Kelli’s pride wasn’t stopping her from returning home, instead
there was a different reason why she had fled South Philly for the nearby low
key suburb of Folcroft.
Everyone
in Kelli’s neighborhood affiliated her with being Nick’s woman. It was a stigma
she longed to avoid, but just couldn’t shake. The frustrations that came from
dealing with the points and whispers of having a child whose father was in
prison for robbing an armored truck became too much for Kelli to deal with on
an everyday basis. Moving out to the suburbs freed Kelli’s mind, and she liked
it that way.
“Lookin’
a lil’ sleepy. Up late getting some exercise?” asked Marie.
Marie
was a slightly agitating co-worker, with a penchant for corny jokes and bad
puns. Of all the people in Kelli’s office, Marie was the only one who Kelli
really conversed with. She was an older woman, in her mid- forties, but did her
best to remain youthful and jubilant. Between two cups of coffee every morning,
a healthy diet and a strict routine of walking a mile every evening, Marie had
the energy of an 18 year old.
Exercise
referred to sex in Marie’s slang filled vocabulary.
“No, I
haven’t come close to even thinking about taking on an exercise partner in a
long time,” sarcastically mocked Kelli.
“Not
since Brown eyes, huh?”
Brown
Eyes was a man Kelli had met a while back when she had been stranded on the
side of the road having car trouble. He had swooped in like a knight in shining
armor and given Kelli a jump, at the same time intriguing her romantic
interests. Not only was Brown Eyes a cutie, but he spoke like a gentleman and
even told Bryson to “take care of Momma.” Kelli was smitten from the 15 minute
encounter, but she didn’t even have a name for Brown Eyes. He was more like a
perfect fantasy than an actual love interest, and Kelli liked it that way. If
Brown Eyes became a real person, then Kelli’s life got instantly more
complicated than it already was.
Marie
was one of those women who seemed to come to work with the sole purpose of
socializing, yet somehow always managed to make her quota and receive a bonus
check each month. She was happy go lucky, but being from the same South
Philadelphia area as Kelli, she didn’t take any nonsense either.
“Have
you found any good MC’s today?” asked Kelli.
“Nope,”
sighed Marie.
MC’s
were missed connections on Craigslist. Each day, hundreds of people posted free
ads on the popular website trying to reconnect with a person whom they had
encountered but weren’t able to connect with somewhere out in the city.
Sometimes, the missed connections were romantic like “We shared a magical connection, as our eyes locked for a few seconds on
the 419 bus” or “I dropped my
umbrella and you picked it up and returned it to me with the most beautiful
smile that I have ever seen in my lifetime”
Other
times, the missed connections were straight filth like “Busty blond in liquor store on Broad Street with tits hanging out of her
halter top with the tramp stamp. Hit me up for a nightcap…and more” or “sexy Black chic with the badonkadunk from
McDonald’s. Let me show you my Big Mac sometime” Nevertheless, Marie
faithfully read the missed connections each and every day. It was her guilty
pleasure and whether she read them looking for her own love connection or just
for amusement, they were much more entertaining than the Sudoku puzzles that
the rest of the office was addicted to.
“You
never want to miss out on a love that could be waiting for you. Might even find
Brown Eyes,” Marie justified her actions by saying.
“I
doubt it. He didn’t seem like the missed connections type at all,” replied
Kelli.
“I bet
you any amount of money he reads them. I can feel it in my spirit that Brown
Eyes is a MC reader,” said Marie.
“Nah, I’m telling you, he’s not
that type,” countered Kelli.
“Oh, so you have already pegged him
as a type? Interesting,” doted Marie.
Kelli
took about a half a second to reminisce back to the dashing Brown Eyes, who had
helped on the side of the road. He was indeed her type; tall, athletic build
and a natural charmer. Brown Eyes was well groomed, but still portrayed a
rugged handsomeness like a hero in an old Western movie. However, dating was
the last thing on Kelli’s mind. Her situation with Nick was complex and there
was no official title to their relationship anymore, which prevented any type
of closure.
Meeting
men and dating would be complicated and would also force Kelli to explain
things to Bryson that she didn’t think he was quite ready to understand or
comprehend just yet. For time being, Brown Eyes was better left in fantasy
land, as far as Kelli was concerned. Besides, Kelli personally struggled to
succumb to the notion that she would meet the perfect man through the fate of a
cheap website, but Marie’s hopeless romantic actions were cute. In fact, despite
being a little pushy at times, Marie herself was cute.
Marie was a petite redhead, with a
round face that looked like it was almost built to be sporting a smile. She
wore her hair in a layered Drew Barrymore type of style and dressed the part of
a Sex in the City extra. Marie had never married or had any children, and she
never seemed to take things too seriously. Any bad day she experienced at work
could be fixed with a Pomegranate Passion Margarita and any financial crisis
could be solved by sweet talking whoever she was in debt to.
While Marie’s
world was that simple, Kelli’s was much more complex. Her mysterious late night
phone call had only added to those complexities. The exact words that the man
had spoken to Kelli were slowly fading from memory, but the tone of his voice
was etched in Kelli’s permanent database. Kelli could never erase the fear in
the mysterious man’s voice, which had in turn elicited fear in her. Just as
Kelli decided to explain to Marie the real reason behind her drowsiness, her
work phone rang with an incoming call from a customer. It was probably for the
best; work was for work – not socializing and making friends anyway.
