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Again this morning, Hannah wakes up dead. She might have been surprised if she had the courage to feel anything, just as it’s been every day for the last thirteen months and twenty-six days. The claustrophobic cell is awash in blues and grimy greys. A persistent institutional hum intensifies her dense fugue.
Her first thought: Where is my boy? Her brain crackles with tangled memories. Gone. Her son is gone. Metal clanging on metal punctuates the horrific reminder. Hannah cannot breathe. A gruff voice over the loudspeaker bellows the start of another endless day. Hannah struggles to rise against the monstrous weight that pins her rigid body to the unforgiving mattress. *** It happened so abruptly, although not unexpectedly if anyone had been paying attention. If anyone cared enough to notice or offer Hannah help. For three years, she and Jackson tried to conceive. Every bloody month was a reminder that Hannah wasn’t fit to add her genetic code to the Munroe family’s lineage. She desperately wanted to be pregnant and prove to Jackson’s mother that they could make their unlikely coupling work. Two weeks before their first appointment at the swanky fertility clinic, Hannah’s pale yellow pee produced a blue plus sign on the white plastic stick. She and Jackson spooned all night, his gentle hand on her soft belly. Seldom had Hannah felt healthier or more optimistic. Jackson’s mother created a short list of baby names: Mason, Marshall, Maxwell, certain Hannah was carrying another Munroe son. After nineteen hours of focused labor, Mackenzie slipped into the world weighing seven pounds, ten ounces. He was perfect. Perfection lasted two weeks, until Jackson vanished into the world outside their home. His thirst for fatherhood satiated, his long days left him too tired to wake for midnight feedings. Then the crying started. Not Mackenzie. Hannah. She cried every day. Exhausted, she couldn’t sleep. Food tasted like cardboard that she pushed down her throat because a good mother breastfeeds. Her milk dried up. Headaches corrupted her thinking. Her body ached. She shrank until only her shadow remained. Before her body atomized like dust in the wind, Hannah settled on the long, blue sofa with Mackenzie’s tiny, warm body nestled against her chest. She kissed his downy head and closed her eyes. He never cried. *** Since that awful day, Hannah remained as silent as the grave. Unable to answer the unanswerable questions hurled at her by Jackson, his mother, the police, her lawyer, her shrink. How did it happen? Why did it happen? How does she have the gall to go on living? Hannah rolled her leaden body onto her left side. As slow-moving as a week of rain and tears, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Her bare feet recoiled from the cold cement floor, and she sucked in a sharp, deep breath. In that moment, a single word escaped her brain, slipped across her lips, and ruptured her months-long silence. “Mackenzie.” The sound of his name shocked Hannah’s heart, transmitting a whisper of life to her dead limbs. She looked out the barred window of her cell as if for the first time. Light scattered the mist in the gray morning sky. She crossed her arms and embraced the memory of her precious son. The monstrous weight of grief shifted and resettled on her chest. Her grief will always be with her. Now she must learn to sit with it. Express it. Learn from it. © 2025 Diana L. Gustafson About the author: Diana L. Gustafson is a Canadian academic and emerging creative author with an MFA from The University of British Columbia. She received an honourable mention in an Off Topic Publishing fiction contest and has a modest record of published fiction and creative non-fiction. She has an embarrassingly large collection of eccentric corrective lenses, but none are rose-coloured, a testament to her commitment to social justice issues.
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“Why we gotta take my car?” Ricky asked.
“Cuz everyone knows my ride. It catches people’s eyes. It ain’t made for jobs like this one. Your Civic doesn’t stand out,” Josue said. “Let’s take Los’s car. He drives a Maxima.” “Look, the more people know about it the more people you gotta worry about. Keep it simple. We’re doing this, me and you, and we’re driving the Civic. End of story.” Josue put his cigarette out in the overfilled ashtray and flicked it to the stained carpet floor. He grabbed a pair of keys from the coffee table and tossed them to Ricky. “Let’s go.” The two men walked out of the flophouse apartment and descended a crumbling red wooden staircase. The triple decker’s exterior had chipped away over time. A satellite dish was held on to the roof by its last screw. The building leaned inward toward the road. They drove through streets of dilapidated houses and brick apartment buildings that housed tough lives. The turn of the century buildings attempted gilded age glamour without the budget. Each stoplight featured a scuzzball with a cardboard sign. In downtown Springfield, they started at the Carnival Club, a nightclub that attempted to mimic the New Orleans French Quarter with a pink exterior and wrought iron balcony. It wasn’t there. They tried Andino’s Market on Main Street. No luck. They turned the corner of Union Street and parked where they had a vantage point of Fredo’s Market. A meticulously clean white Mercedes was parked between red awnings. “That’s it right there,” Josue said. “How you know it’s the one?” Ricky asked. “The license plate says, ‘BIG DAVE.’” A behemoth in athletic warmups walked out of Fredo’s with a black plastic bag in hand. The bald man with a tight beard and sunglasses that were too small for his head could have been mistaken for an offensive lineman. His gold necklace swayed as he looked up and down the street before opening the car door. Ricky waited for the Mercedes to turn the corner before he put the Civic in drive. He let a couple of cars get between them before following. The Mercedes navigated a few blocks of downtown streets before it pulled into the Carnival Club parking lot with a black iron fence perimeter. Ricky and Josue watched Big Dave enter the building with his lunch in hand. The men squared the block and found street parking where they could watch the Mercedes. Josue removed a bandana from his pocket and tied it behind his neck, letting it hang under his chin. He put on black cotton gloves. Thirty minutes passed before Big Dave left The Carnival Club. He scanned the lot as he trotted back to the Mercedes. Ricky followed and tried to leave a car between them, but none were on the road. He followed the Mercedes through a couple of traffic lights and turned with it onto Main Street. “He’s gonna make you,” Josue said. “It’s either this or we lose him,” Ricky said. Josue saw Big Dave’s eyes glaring at them in the rearview mirror. Big Dave shifted around the driver’s seat and center console. The Mercedes turned into the parking lot of the Italian American Club. “Let’s do it here,” Josue said. He pulled the bandana over his mouth and nose and pulled his hood over his head. He opened the center console and removed a black Glock nine-millimeter. The Civic pulled in behind the Mercedes as it parked nearly touching bumpers. Josue’s sneakers touched the pavement before the Civic stopped. In five rhythmic strides he came around behind the Civic and encountered Big Dave trying to get out of the Mercedes with a silver revolver in hand. Josue squeezed the trigger rapidly at Big Dave’s gut and chest. Big Dave managed to lift the gun and squeeze a round off, but it was aimless. Big Dave painfully screamed and fell face forward onto the concrete looking like a beached whale. Josue aimed the Glock at his back and pulled the trigger three more times. Red stains pooled through Big Dave’s athletic warmups. At the front entrance of the Italian American Club, a woman in her fifties frozen in place inside the doorway. Her eyes were as wide as golf balls and her mouth was stuck open. Josue approached her and tapped the glass door with the Glock. “Me viste dispararle?” The woman looked at Josue but was unable to process what was happening. “El gordo bastardo esta muerta.” Josue watched the woman fall to the floor sobbing. She crawled out of sight. He watched the Civic back out of the parking lot and casually pull onto the road. Josue dropped the Glock next to Big Dave’s body and stepped into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes. *** “I did it just like you said,” Josue said. A thin man in his thirties sat forward in an oversized leather chair. His forearms were placed on a mahogany desk. His custom fitted suit rested perfectly on his body. “You made it look like a carjacking?” “I took the Mercedes if that’s what you mean.” “Where is it now?” “In Holyoke. In the Connecticut River.” “And there was a witness, right? They know this wasn’t Italian?” the man asked. “Yeah, that lady knows it was guys from Holyoke. What now, Gio?” Gio leaned back in his chair and interlaced his hands over his stomach. “It’s not Gio anymore brother, it’s Mr. Godello. Now I run the Springfield crew.” He removed a thick manilla envelope from the desk drawer and handed it to Josue. “And you run our place on Worthington Street.” Josue slid the envelope into his pocket. “We’ll be in touch then.” He walked toward the door. “By the way, I meant to ask you. You did all this with just you and Ricky?” Josue looked over his shoulder. “The more people know about it, the more people you gotta worry about. Keep it simple.” © 2025 Goody McDonough About the author: Goody McDonough is an author from Farmington Valley, Connecticut who specializes in crime fiction. |
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