A Twist Of Noir 643 - Phil Beloin Jr.

SCARS - PHIL BELOIN JR.

I waited for my sis outside the Niantic Woman’s Correctional Institution. When an inmate’s granted parole, the State of Connecticut requires that the released prisoner have a stable place to stay. The parole board chose our Mom, a bi-polar schizo who thinks Obama’s a Muslim and the folks at Fox News are dupes for Beelzebub.

I live with Mom and I’m a two tour decorated war vet. I picked up a purple heart picking up a Fallujah whore. Bet you didn’t know three percent of Iraqis are Catholic. And man, are they easy to spot. I was getting blown in some sandy alley when a car bomb went off about six blocks away. I caught some metal, some decent head, and later, they pinned old GW on me. Medic wanted to know why I was grinning while he gauzed my scraped hip. Dude, I had to hold my sidearm in the whore’s ear to get her to finish me off.

Sis was looking skanky in a dull gray dress, hair straggly and nope on the makeup thing.

“Hey, ex-con,” I said, reaching over, squeezing her hard.

“Brat,” she said. “You look good.”

I pulled away from her and drove.

“You mean I ain’t dead is all,” I said.

“Don’t take me home,” Sis said. “I want to avoid Mom for awhile.”

“We ain’t going there yet.”

“Can I see your scar?”

Which ones?

“Can’t,” I said. “Not with the new distracted driver laws.”

“So where we headed?”

“The cemetery.”

“No…no…no…”

Last I’d seen Sis outside of jail was eighteen months ago during one of our unit’s rare rotations home. I’d wanted to surprise her so I came down from Fort Drum unannounced. She was seeing this guy, Mark, a first date, everything planned...Mark tried to back out, another time he said, but Sis insisted the three of us could hang together. Mark could hold his bourbon and when he produced some pain pills and other capsulated ditties, we go so fucking high; we all woke up in the same bedroom, me on the floor in the can, Mark and Sis half-naked in bed.

Mark slipped from the room while I was in and out of it, couldn’t really say nothing, and I never saw him again.

Sis said she’d blacked out, couldn’t remember a stitch. Me, too, I said.

Then it was back to Fort Drum, more training, and another jaunt to Satan’s hemorrhaging asshole. Five or six months later, I got this frantic call from Mom. Sis had miscarried, in the tub, blood everywhere—the cops said it looked self-induced.

I hadn’t even known she was pregnant. I asked if Mark was the father.

“Maybe, but he didn’t see her but that one night you were home,” Mom said. “Honey, there’s more.”

When Sis had felt a little better, she tracked Mark down, stabbing him twice. Mark got stitches. Sis got two to four for attempted manslaughter.

Mom got the fetus the headstone where Sis and I were standing now.

“Why are we here?” Sis said, trying to hold it together.

“I talked on the phone to Mark...”

“That guy got me pregnant, the fuck.”

“He doesn’t recall anything from that night.”

“Yeah...still...but it’s like date rape or something.”

“He had a DNA test done to see if the baby was his.”

“He what?”

“You in jail, they don’t have to tell you nothing. Test came back negative.”

“Holy shit... You lying? I stab the wrong fucker? I didn’t sleep with no one else.”

“Truth is,” I said. “I remember that night. I was wasted, hallucinating, totally out of it and you lying there in bed. I had to move Mark—he was over the toilet—put him in bed with you later.”

“What the fuck you talking about?”

“You should’ve stuck the knife in me, Sis.”

BIO: Visit Phil’s blog. You’ll find the first chapter to his novel, The Big Bad, plus a few local Connecticut stores that carry the book.