Should I be scared, Brock?”
The intimidating figure flashed a hard and fast smile. “Why, do I scare you?”
Brock moved over to the low couch in front of the bay windows and sat down slowly, the couch creaking under his frame. He watched as she set down the papers she had been filing and took her place in her easy chair several feet in front of the couch. He gave her credit: he was six and a half feet tall and 280 pounds of pure muscle with a hard jaw and a harder glare. Every time he came here, he would stare at her dead in the eyes. It was a habit that grew naturally in the slammer. Even the toughest criminals would look away. She never did.
“This is most irregular, Brock. My office closed an hour ago and you didn’t even have an appointment today. You know you’re supposed to notify me and your parole officer every time you come to one of these sessions.”
Brock cracked his knuckles behind his head. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, sugar. I’ve never hurt a woman in my entire life. I came here because I needed to talk to someone. Maybe have you ask questions like you like to do.” He glanced behind himself quickly through the bay windows that looked out on the manicured lawn ten feet below.
She knew through the parole officer what he had done and the bouts of destruction he was capable of, but she had never felt personally threatened by him. She paused. “Okay, Brock. Let’s start with a personal question, from me to you. The city pays me to try and counsel you. Now, we’ve been having these sessions every other day for an hour for over six months—ever since you got out. That’s more time than some Hollywood marriages last, and you’ve never talked freely with me about your feelings. Why did you come in here unannounced today wanting to finally open up with me?”
This lady was one of the few people man enough to talk to him this way. His smirk shifted at the ironic pun. “I don’t know, Doc. I needed a place to clear my head. Figure things out before whatever happens, happens.”
She watched him as he stood up and paced. The leather coat he was wearing was oddly torn and blackened on the right shoulder. “What’s going to happen, Brock?”
They both perked at a police siren that must have been several miles away. Brock used the interruption to dodge the question. He moved over to the window, setting his palms against the glass like some oversized, muscle-bound young boy. Quietly: “Do you think it’s possible for me to escape who I used to be?”
She smiled, even though he wasn’t facing her. “I think you can beat your past, Brock.”
He shook his head, almost like he was speaking to his faint reflection. “You can try to forget the past, but the past never forgets you.” A pause. Darker: “Maybe I shouldn’t have parked so close.”
Framed against the bay window and the setting rays of the sun, his commanding shadow fell across her face. Set against the light, his fingers splayed against the glass, she saw something she had not seen before. There was blood on his hands.
It was cause for alarm. “Brock, what happened? You need to be honest with me.”
His head bent forward until it met the glass. “I got into a fight.” The doctor stiffened as the siren that had previously been a distant noise grew louder. “Brock…”
“There were four or five of them.” He interrupted her. “I was at the gas station getting my smokes. And then I got into a fight with a police officer who got called in.” He paused as he sank back down on the couch, scratching the back of his head as if he were a child admitting to his mother he stole from the cookie jar. “Then I lit the gas station on fire, blew up the pumps, stole that car, and drove here because I needed to talk to you.”
She sat for a moment in stunned silence. “Brock…did you kill anyone?”
He leapt back to his feet and began to pace wildly. “I don’t know.” He looked out the bay windows again, but this time his face grew concerned as he saw what was coming. Growing more excited with every breath of his rant, he continued, almost shouting as he watched the street below slowly filling with squad cars.
“I needed to talk to you, Doc—one last time—because you’re the only person in this damned city I trust and the only person who’s ever tried to help me.” Through the window, they could see the police outside approaching the office building. “Like a full circle, you always find yourself back at the beginning. The old days, the bad days—they’re back.”
He stepped back quickly and locked the door. Pulling a pair of silver handguns out of his coat, he leveled them one at the door and the other towards the window. “Step away from the windows. Believe me, sugar, it’s not where you want to be right now.”
She stood up, but didn’t move. She spoke up strong. “Don’t do this, Brock. Turn yourself in. You can fix this if you just cool down.” He looked back at her and her piercing gaze. “There’s no cooling down, Doc— there’s only the fire, and the fire is back even though I thought it was tamed. And all that’s left is one last blaze of glory.”
She looked and felt betrayed. “What do you want from me, Brock? To tell you what you did is okay, that you’re some kind of martyr? I don’t know what you are anymore, but God, I thought you were one of the ones who meant it. I thought you could change.”
His head slowly shook no. He stood as a man who was doomed and had known it since the day he was born. “People don’t change, Doc, only the lies they tell themselves.” He reflected with a clarity inspired by imminent mortality. “I thought I was cured, but I’m still the same. I’m still the same little boy who was so scared of his own shadow and the world around him that he grew two tons of muscle thinking if he could destroy the world before it destroyed him, he wouldn’t be scared anymore.”
The doctor’s expression fell. She slowly shook her head and turned her back on him to walk slowly to the relative safety of the corner. She met his gaze through the dark of the room. “What are you going to do, Brock?”
He cocked the guns and closed his eyes. “Light a spark that will catch a fire.” His eyes gained a certain focus as he turned to her. “Do you have insurance on these windows?”
“Yes, Brock, but what does that have to do with any—”
In one motion, he whipped the chair into a perfect arc, shattering the bay windows and exposing the ground ten feet below. He leapt into an uncertain night.
