Too Late

Ankle monitors. They’re impossible to beat. You cut them, you get caught immediately. The fiber optic sensors inside of them will send an immediate signal as soon as they’re tampered with and the police will show up at your door within seconds.

You can’t just let the battery die, or the police will be notified. You can’t possibly slip them off your foot because feet don’t bend the way wrists do, and God didn’t take ankle monitors into consideration when he designed the human skeleton, the fucking selfish bastard. You can’t leave the perimeter of where you’re confined to or the police will be notified. Hell, you can’t even get drunk. Most ankle monitors come with sensors that periodically test alcohol levels in your skin. Not that I’m upset by that. I was never one to need alcohol. I just enjoy it, but I can do without.

Unless you’re a tech geek with more knowledge than the tech geeks who invented the motherfucking ankle monitor, there’s absolutely, without a doubt, no way to get around them without the police immediately being on your tail.

Which sucks, because knowing Luke, he’s set it up so that he’ll be notified as soon as my monitor indicates I’ve left my house or that the monitor has been tampered with in any way. There’s no way I could make it from here to their place without them being given plenty of advance warning. And yes, I could send someone to their apartment to do my work for me, but where’s the fun in that? Where’s the fun in watching a bullet stop Luke’s heart when I’m not standing in front of him, smelling the gunpowder? Where’s the fun in making Sloan realize what a pathetic life choice she’s made when I’m not the one tasting her tears when she cries for mercy?

It’s a good thing I’m a big planner. I plan everything. I look at all possible scenarios and I develop ways around them before the events even occur. Because I’m a motherfucking genius. Just like good ol’ grandpa.

I remember when I was a kid, there was a moment I thought I was going to die. I had slipped into my mother’s bedroom and had stolen some pills from her. Fuck, I was so little I couldn’t even read yet. I had no idea what I was taking, I just knew I wanted to feel whatever she felt. I wanted to chase whatever feeling it was that she loved more than her own child.

I woke up a few hours after I had taken them and my ankles looked like fucking baseballs. Both my legs were swollen. Back then I thought it was because I was dying and all my blood was pooling in my feet. But now I know it was because of the medication. Anti-depressants, pain pills, calcium channel blockers. They all cause severe edema, which was what I was experiencing as a kid. I just didn’t realize it then.

A few months ago, Pansy Paul told me there was a chance I might get house arrest while we waited for the trial. Most defendants in my situation would be offered some sort of bail so they could walk around free, but with my record, he was almost certain I’d be confined to my house until a verdict was reached at trial. That’s one of the few things I’m grateful to Pansy Paul for. The forewarning. It gave me a good solid week to obtain and consume as many fucking pills I could to guarantee a good couple of inches on each ankle. Wasn’t hard to do since I was already in a hospital, thanks to those two fuckers who thought it’d be a good idea to actually fucking shoot me. Pricks.

Since the ankle monitor was attached, I’ve had to keep up with the medications just so the follow-up visits from the probation officer wouldn’t raise any red flags. Stupid fucker has never even thought twice about the fact that my ankles and calves are the size of tree trunks. His name is Stewart. Who in real life is really named Stewart? Stewart thinks I’m just “big boned.” I rejoice in his stupidity with every visit. I also kind of like the guy, because he feels bad for me. He thinks I’m a good guy because I laugh at his lame jokes and I talk to him about Jesus. Stewart fucking loves Jesus. I even had Anthony bring me a crucifix. Before Stewart’s visit this morning, I hung it on my living room wall above the flat-screen TV where I watch hours upon hours of porn. Ironic, huh? When Stewart saw the Jesus-on-a-stick, he commented on it. I told him it was my grandpa’s. I told him he was a Baptist preacher and it helps to look at that crucifix and know that grandpa is looking down on me.

It’s a lie, of course. I doubt my grandpa ever even stepped foot inside a church. And if he really did own a crucifix, he probably used it to beat people with.

Stewart liked it, though. Said he has one almost identical to it, but it’s not quite as big. He also checked my ankle monitor and told me everything looked great and that he’d see me in a week. I gave him a slice of coconut cake before he left.

Now I’m standing here, staring down at the bottle of hydrochlorothiazide in my hands. I have to be smart with it, because taking too much could drop my blood pressure like a motherfucker. But I need to take enough to get rid of the edema. Enough to create a large enough gap between me and my ankle monitor so that I can slip it off and onto Anthony’s wrist.

That’s where the genius comes in. If a person could actually slip an ankle monitor off without tampering with the fiber optics, the chances of it picking that up are slim to none. Ankle monitors are monitored periodically throughout the day. Set up on timers and shit. So the switch from my foot to Anthony’s wrist will go completely unnoticed, so long as the actual piece of equipment isn’t tampered with. They thought ankle monitors were foolproof because they don’t slip off the ankles of people of average intelligence.

It’s the geniuses like me they should have been more concerned with. Now I just have to be able to trust Anthony enough not to leave my fucking house or drink any alcohol until I tell him it’s done. Then I’ll put the ankle monitor back on my ankle and it’ll look like I never left my house.

In the meantime, I still have more planning to do. I open the bottle and pop four of the pills. I open my laptop and begin searching obstetricians while I place phone calls for two hours straight. By the time I finally figure out which obstetrician Sloan is seeing, I’ve already pissed four times. The ankle monitor is already starting to feel loose. I was thinking this would take a few days, but I think this can actually happen as soon as tomorrow morning.

The person who answers the phone puts me on hold while she searches the file for what I’m assuming is a confidentiality agreement. HIPPA compliance and all that shit.

“Sir?” she asks to see if I’m still on the line.

“Here,” I tell her.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Luke,” I tell her. “I’m the father.”

Ha! I laugh internally at all the Star Wars jokes that poor fucker must have endured in his lifetime.

“Can you confirm your address and date of birth?” she asks.

I confirm both of them. Because I know both of them. Because I’m a genius. Once my “identity” is confirmed, she says, “And what is it you were wanting to know?”

“The due date. I’m having a video made for our family to announce the pregnancy and I don’t want to ask Sloan, because she’ll get mad that I forgot the exact due date. So I’m hoping you can just share that information with me to keep me out of the doghouse.”

The woman laughs. She likes that I’m such a loving and caring man, excited about the birth of my child. ”Looks like the conception occurred in March. Due date is...Christmas Day! Not sure how you could forget that, Dad,” she says with a laugh.

I laugh, too. “That’s right. Christmas Day. Our very own little miracle. Thanks for checking.”

“No problem!”

I hang up the phone and look at a calendar. Sloan was still living with me in March.

Luke was around in March. A whole fucking lot.

I’m not sure when the brainwashing started, or when she gave herself to him. My whole body stiffens at the thought. I can’t believe he fucked her. My Sloan.

I can’t believe she let him. I have no idea if they even used a condom. I know for a fact the fucker didn’t use one when he decided to take her right in front...

Not going there.

I will not allow those visions to repeat in my head. The worst fucking moment of my life. I keep telling myself it was a nightmare, that everything I saw—the words that came out of her mouth, the noises they made—it was a nightmare. I had been shot four fucking times, I lost a lot of blood. It could not have been real. There’s no way that bitch stood in front of me and allowed another man to stick his...

Not. Going. There.

I stand up, filled with renewed rage. I pick the chair up I was just sitting in and I throw it across the room, watching it smash against the door. I sprint across the living room and pull the fucking crucifix off the wall. I bash it against the TV, cracking the screen.

That feels good. Sloan was with me when I bought that TV. It feels good to fucking smash it. I look for something else to smash. A mirror. I run toward it and slam the crucifix against it three times until all the glass is shattered on the floor.