Final Victim (1995) Read Free

been picked on, but he had learned to fight at Materwood--something that came in very handy at St. Charles a few years later.
    "What do you remember?" Dr. Smythe prodded. "This won't work if you don't participate."
    "Oh . . . Sorry, I was just going back to Materwood in my head * * remembering the place. I guess they did all they could for us. They were underfunded. We had okay sports, but the equipment was all hand-me-down stuff from the public school system. The bats and everything were cracked, and we hadda wrap 'em tight with tape to use 'em. . . ." He was talking with his eyes closed, chewing up the hour.
    "What am I supposed to do with all this bullshit, John?" Dr. Smyth e f inally said. "Am I supposed to just sign off on you and pass you along till you turn into someone else's field disaster? 'Cause if that's what you're planning, I can outlast you. Shit, man, I can have you lounge on that couch until your beard is gray."
    John knew, eventually, he had to give this guy something. The problem was, there was some truth in what Dr. Smythe had said. Lockwood had been raised by institutions. The Materwood orphanage was bad, but St. Charles Academy had been a dungeon . . . a piss-hole full of social mutants. Boys with men's bodies who'd been deformed by relatives, demeaned by experience, and destroyed by their environment. He remembered the day he'd walked through the gates at St. Charles. He'd been too small and looked too easy. Fifteen years old . . . trying to saunter, trying to look tough, bouncing on his toes, rolling his shoulders. He was terrified and trying not to look it.
    "Hey, tight-ass. You gonna be my weenie woman," an eighteenyear-old black inmate named Dwight Jackson yelled through the yard fence at him. Everybody at St. Charles, including the guards, called Dwight "Crazy-D." He was six-two and weighed over two hundred pounds. He had already been reprocessed by the adult criminal court and was awaiting transfer to the state pen at Joliet. He looked to John like he'd been chiseled out of purple onyx. John tried to glare fiercely at him, but Crazy-D wasn't buying.
    "You my chick with a dick," Crazy-D yelled. "You're mine, sweetmeat."
    The students at St. Charles slept in dormitories, and somehow it had been arranged for John to have the bunk right above Dwight Jackson. John knew that as soon as the lights were out, he would be pulled down and his head buried under a pillow. . . . His arms would be held and he would be raped by the huge inmate. This was something he was determined to prevent, even if he had to get wrecked in the process. At nin e o 'clock, just before the trusty pulled the power switch on Building 12, Crazy-D patted the top bunk. "Dis be de trick bunk. Jump your curvy ass up der. We gonna get to it soon as de Jelly Roll call lights-out," he said, grinning, exposing four gold teeth.
    John had left his shoes on and, saying nothing, jumped up onto the top bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Then, while Crazy-D moved around the room, laughing and high-fiving the brothers, John quietly pulled the heavy, leather-soled brogans off his feet. When the lights were turned out, he waited.
    "Get your ass down here," Crazy-D whispered from the bunk below. "I got a instrument needs playing." And then he kicked the mattress above him, where John was lying.
    Without saying a word, John Lockwood dropped down and, with his leather shoe in his right hand, he started to pound the larger boy in the face. He broke Dwight's nose with the first blow. The second filled his eyes with blood. Before the startled eighteen-year-old could even sit up, it was almost over. Then, with both hands laced together, John swung with all his might at Dwight's jawline. Gold teeth flew out of Crazy-D's mouth, hitting the floor and bouncing like ejected brass. In seconds, Dwight was screaming in pain. When the lights went on and guards ran in, John Lockwood was standing triumphantly over his huge opponent.
    "No motherfucker in this