Joe Victim: A Thriller

I look out the fence where there are other fences and other patches of field. Beyond the furthest of fences is freedom. Joe Victim needs that freedom. Joe Victim was never meant to be contained in a place like this. Joe Victim needs to spread his wings and fly.

I turn my thoughts to my mother and Walt, which is unfortunate because I end up thinking about what they’re going to get up to on their honeymoon. It makes me feel ill. Walt, with his wrinkly hands on my mother, my mother’s wrinkles sagging in all the places no man other than Walt would want to see, the way all those wrinkles lock into place like snapping pieces of a jigsaw together. I’m starting to think the only way to get rid of those thoughts would be to walk across the yard and hand Caleb Cole a sharpened toothbrush. Instead I focus on the books mom brought in for me.

From my girlfriend.

From Melissa.

The plastic bag was taken from me by the guards, but I was allowed to keep the books. The bag was considered a weapon. The books were considered a joke. Adam laughed at the titles. I’m sure he’s still laughing about it. Melissa visited my mother and gave her a handful of romance paperbacks to give to me, but why?

There are only two reasons I can think of. The first is that she knows I really love romance novels. Spending two nights with Melissa and having her stalk me the week before, she learned that in my heart I am nothing but a true romantic. Her books are a gift to me to help me pass my days before we can be together again.

The second reason needs looking into, and when exercise hour finishes I walk back to my cell before shower hour and start looking for it. I pick the first book up. It’s called Bodies of Lust, and at first I think it might be more than just a romance novel, that it might be more of a description of the nights I spent with Melissa before my world was thrown off course, but reading a few pages at random I quickly learn otherwise. I flick through the book, looking for bent pages, looking for highlighted passages, or any kind of pencil markings, but there is nothing.

I open book two. An envelope falls out and lands on my stomach. My heart skips a beat, but when I turn it over I see it’s already been torn open, no doubt by the guards when they were checking for drugs. So whatever message Melissa has written for me, they’ve seen it. I open it up. It’s a card. Only it’s not from Melissa. It’s from my mother. It’s a wedding invitation. It has a picture on it. It’s an illustration, not a photo, and in the illustration two cartoon hands are cutting the wedding cake with a big knife. It reminds me of a knife I used to have. I read the details and shake my head while doing so. I put the card back into the envelope and pick the book back up.

There are no hidden messages in it. The same goes for the other books. Books with bad titles and bad writing and bad characters that make me warm inside when I read them. No markings, no messages, no point, and the guards would have flicked through them for the same reason well before my mother ever handed them to me. But there has to be something, otherwise why would Melissa give them to me? And she would have known she couldn’t write in them, or underline things—because she would have known the books would be searched. So what then? What am I missing?

I open Show Love to Get Love, which, I’m pretty sure, could be the worst title ever picked for a book. But these kinds of books all normally have bad names. It’s part of the appeal. Bad names and ripped men on the covers, women wearing sheer clothing. Except in this case the title sounds like a self-help book. I get a few chapters into it, realizing that the way for Belinda, the main character, to find love is for her to give her love to as many men as she can in the hope that one of them will look past the fact that she’s acting a little like a whore.