Violent Offender: Chapter One

Kashawn Taylor

“Whoa, whoa, breathe. Sit down”

The voice came from what I believed was behind me. I wasn’t entirely sure; my consciousness flickered. The room around me spun like I was on some poorly constructed tilt-a-whirl at a janky fair off the side of the road. But I was dead sober. Save for nicotine, I hadn’t ingested any mind-altering substances since the night before when I drank a beer bought for me by my Aunt Donna, with whom I was living at the time. 

Sweat poured down my forehead, my cheeks. Or was I crying? My ass found the thin cushion of the chair behind me, but the room continued to spin. Where am I again? Who am I?  What the fuck is going on?

Since my crash, I'd started using breathing exercises to calm my galloping heart. In the year and a half awaiting my trial, I'd turned to them on the nights I numbed the worry by sniffing cocaine and drinking with friends, or more frequently, alone.  Nonetheless, the breathing exercise worked, and I grounded myself in reality.

The spinning ceased, but my surroundings suffocated me. The courtroom became a familiar arena but was full of strangers, apart from Uncle Randy, Uncle Ringo, Aunt Donna, and my father. My grandmother, now in her late eighties, couldn’t make my sentencing date. I tried to focus, to listen, to at least appear present like I wasn’t lost inside my head, like a child who’d wandered into the woods at dusk, never to return.  

“This is one of the most remarkable PSIs I have ever seen. Fifth in his high school class, advanced degree, no prior offenses…”  The prosecutor rattled off other things the pre-sentence investigation had uncovered, but her voice sounded slushy and detached, as though I were listening through a wall of water.

“I’ve reviewed the PSI,” said Judge Ianotti, “and despite the remarkable aspects, one could argue that he should have known better with all that schooling.”

They discussed me as though I wasn’t there, like I wasn’t damn near hyperventilating twenty feet away.

The prosecutor pointed out that however remarkable the PSI, the crimes to which I’d pled guilty were severe, first offense or not.  

I am responsible for another person’s death.

There is no other way to say it – no way to swim around it.  I could say it was an accident, but that would imply something out of my control.  Like many of us, I’d been slipping slowly downhill for all of 2020, making choices that brought me closer and closer to trouble.  That night, I made choices that turned slippage into an all-out tumble.

It’s the day after Christmas, and I’m sad. I’m not sure why I’m sad. I’ve never enjoyed the holidays, but they’ve never dampened my spirits. Today is particularly rough.

In the early afternoon, I hang out with my friend Kyle. We drink and sniff cocaine, an activity that has become an increasingly big problem for me in the last few months. I think about seeking professional help, but not until the new year. Right now, what matters is removing the boulder that’s been crushing me all day.

After getting a decent buzz on, I go home. I don’t feel any better, of course, and want to be alone. Kyle is annoying; the world is annoying; it’s all disappointing. Can’t everything just go away for a bit? Just turn off, like a game system so I can recharge without the constant babble of connectedness.  

Today, I remember, is my friend Alisha’s birthday. She’s having a party. She begs me to come. “It’ll be fun to get out of your funk. Come and just hang out for a bit.” Never one to stand up to even the slightest bit of peer pressure, I agree.

Although the party is not for several more hours, I begin getting ready.  I need time to choose the right outfit, think of the right gift. Plus, I want to work off the buzz I’d been so desperate to get earlier.  

These friendships are still fledgling and I want these people to like me. That approval, I think, will fix everything today.

Later, powered by nostalgia, curiosity, and a hint of desperation, I climb up the stairs of a house across the street from where I grew up. There is a bottle of wine in my hand: a gift I bought for Alisha with the help of her boyfriend Luis. I pray she likes it.

The living room is filled with pot smoke. My eyes water at the smoke’s insistence. The first person I see is Leo, looking solemn with a cup in his hand. He’d asked me for a ride tonight, but at the last minute rode with another friend. The dark red gash on the bridge of his nose is still visible, and the dried blood stains on his favorite red and white windbreaker look like some sick splatter painting.  

About two weeks earlier, after an argument with his girlfriend, she asked to be let out of my car. Leo refused to leave the area and I couldn’t let him stay alone. We paid the price for his stubbornness: a group of men and women came from the direction that his girlfriend ran and attacked him. Without hesitation, I jumped in to defend him, slipping on dirty packed snow plowed to the curb earlier that week. I threw many punches, unsure of how many landed but definitely ate way more. While he was down, a woman pepper-sprayed Leo. Then the group retreated into the darkness of the side streets. The next morning, Leo told me that he rubbed his eyes then reached for his dick, and the lingering pepper spray burned his penis.

Looking at Leo’s battle scars, I remember my first and only fight not simulated while playing Tekken, and I shudder. I push those crimson thoughts from my head and resolve to enjoy myself despite feeling a bit uncomfortable.

The party is what I expect of a party. People drink. People smoke. Very few people dance. I take a few hits of a blunt and have a couple of drinks to loosen up. I feel worse; the weed gives me anxiety—the impending doom kind—and drinking more would make me nauseous. Feeling rigid, I force smiles, mingle, and make small talk with strangers. Act natural, I tell myself. Play it cool.

My social battery drains quickly. I want to go home and recharge. After making my goodbye rounds through the small apartment, I head to the front door and notice Leo to my right, sitting alone on the couch. His deep brown eyes are glassy and distant, looking at nothing. A red cup is in his hand as if proffered to anyone for the taking.

“Do you need a ride home?” I ask. His ride has left him, I notice, maybe hours ago. He agrees to the ride, and I take his cup and throw back whatever concoction resided in it. “Let’s go.”

As I drive through the empty streets in the early morning, he asks to stop at a gas station. He goes in and I fiddle with my phone until he returns.  

Leo takes a small baggy of cocaine from his pocket, intending to rail it in the car. I want some, badly, but I say, “Don’t do that here.” He puts up a small fight, and I take the cocaine from him, slipping it into my wallet with the intention of giving it back once we arrive at our destination. “Do you want to go home or sleep over?” I ask, hoping he will choose the latter so we can do his drugs.

“Your house,” he says, and I turn the key in the ignition and drive off.

After leaving the gas station, my sea of memory becomes hazy.

It is dark. The streets are mostly empty, save for the occasional Wendy’s wrapper drifting listlessly in the wind.  I drive past the parking garage for the magnet school downtown.  After that, black, as if someone drags me, kicking and screaming, into the darkest depths of the ocean.  

My eyes open. I’m in my Jeep, but I am unsure where I am and less sure how I got here. My head is pounding, hammers bashing the nerves behind my eyes.  

How odd, I think, that I fell asleep. A sword of panic strikes me. My first, fleeting thought: seizure. I’d had one before and the disorientation is eerily familiar. Wherever I am, I reason, I need to get home, or maybe to a hospital.

I turn the key, which is dangling from the ignition. The vehicle sputters and whines like a recalcitrant child, but it won’t start.

Weird, I tell myself. Still out of it, I decide that this little problem can wait. Right now, I am tired—drained, really—and my head is killing me and my chest feels like it might explode. Nothing a little nap can’t fix. I rest my head on the steering wheel and close my eyes.

Lights. Shouting.

“Get them out of the car!”

“Cuff him!”

I’m suddenly being dragged from the Jeep. I’m cuffed and thrown into the back of what I deduce is a police cruiser.

My vision is blurry and my brain is still foggy, but I piece together some bits of what is happening. The police have me in their car. Lights—lots of them—strobe to the beat pounding in my head. Or maybe, it’s the other way around. What time is it? What the fuck is going on?

I look around. To my right, I see Leo through the window of the cruiser. He’s on a stretcher, yelling something unintelligible as paramedics push him out of my line of sight, into the cold, vast darkness behind me.

The police drive me to the hospital, where they take blood, perform tests, and ask questions. Though I should ask them questions, I remain quiet, letting them prod and poke.

After I assume the tests are completed, I ask the officer in the room with me what is going on. My wrist is cuffed to the bed—I think I deserve some answers. He gives me none.

As I come slowly and fully back to the world I notice there no clocks on the walls. I don’t have my phone. Or wallet. I pull with my arm shackled to the bed and the officer jerks, then relaxes again. The situation solidifies around me, and my anxiety, which had previously settled at a dull simmer, starts to boil. My head begins throbbing again, and my heartbeat quickens like an incipient crescendo in a grand symphony’s last song.

“Garbage,” I say, sitting up, suddenly sweaty-hot and itchy.

“What?” says the officer.

“Gar. Bage.”

He grabs the bin from the floor and holds it near. I lean over, my stomach convulsing and contracting, ready to release a tsunami from my gut. I heave and heave. Eventually, a weak but determined rivulet of some slimy, black, grainy gook dribbles from my mouth.

The officer’s eyes meet mine.

I ask: “What was that?”

He says: “I don’t know.”

What feels like hours pass in torturous silence before the police bring me to the station.

I overhear a conversation:

“We’re not arresting him?”

“No, just bring him in.”

In a small room in the station, two plain-clothes cops ask me questions about my day. I answer earnestly because I know something is wrong but still don’t know what. I tell them everything I can remember, and they prod. “Are you sure?” The officers seem nice enough—they offer me water—and when the interrogation ends, one officer types what I don’t realize is an official statement and asks me to review and sign it.  

Then he tells me what happened.

“You had an accident and hit someone.” His voice is flat, unemotive. I expect more from him, anger or something. “They’re in critical condition. Are you sure you don’t remember anything else?”

Yes, I am sure.

My jaw hangs slack and all the air rushes from my lungs. A chunk of memory is missing like a doctored videotape. I have no recollection of an accident, but also no recollection of anything else. Darkness, as though someone recorded the inside of their pocket. 

Before this bombshell, I felt physically better. Now, the world is threatening to slide off-kilter again. I still don’t know what time it is, but that’s okay because I am dreaming. I must be.

Or maybe I had more to drink than I remember. I don’t feel hungover, and I haven’t been blackout drunk since my days as a spunky undergrad.

Something is very, very wrong.

The police, realizing that I am of no more help to them, take me home.

Registering I don’t have my keys, I bang on the front door, hoping to wake my grandmother. When she doesn’t answer, I go to the back of the house and knock on the sliding glass doors on our back porch that separate the master bedroom from the outside. This is my uncle’s room.

It takes a while for Uncle Randy to wake up. As I wait, the sun begins to rise, the clouds glowing with heavenly early light. The world is quiet, peaceful, as if everything is okay. Nothing is okay.

Once inside, I tell Uncle Randy and Grandma Rose what happened through tears and shrieks.

“Oh my God, Kashawn,” Grandma Rose says. It seems all she can muster. 

I amble to my room, pull shut my blackout curtains, and cry until my eyes hurt and my tear ducts are gasping for moisture.

A month after the crash the lead detective called me to ask if I remembered anything more about that night. I didn’t. Almost casually, he asked if he’d already told me the victim passed. He didn’t, and I am certain he knew that. After that call, I cried, shaking with guilt and shame for minutes or hours. Time was irrelevant.  

My actions stole someone’s life.

And with that, my life, too, was over.

A year later Leo told me what really happened that night. After his girlfriend’s friends ambushed us, Leo admitted he turned to pills and had been crushing them into his drinks. I pushed for more information, but he refused to elaborate on the type or quantity of pills, or who he got them from. 

When I told my public defender, she looked me square in the eye and told me it didn’t matter. And she was right. The police had gotten the results for my blood-alcohol level and it was more than twice the legal limit. Though the pills explained the loss of time, they don’t excuse the choices I made before getting in the vehicle. I had hoped that maybe, just maybe, the fact that he told me this and the fact that paramedics revived him with Narcan at the scene would lead to further tests or investigation. And somehow, that would help me. But it just didn’t matter.  

It took some convincing, but Leo promised to speak at my sentencing date and admit to spiking his drink, not knowing that I would take it and down it. In early July, however, Leo disappeared. Police found him two days after Independence Day, parked outside a cheap motel where we used to party, dead inside the car. He’d committed suicide, succumbing to his own demons that had been plaguing him for a long time. He had placed his ID on the dashboard of the car.

That courtroom became a blindingly bright operating room where I dissected how royally I had fucked up my life. My grandma raised me well; I had almost everything I ever wanted. Sneakers. Clothes. Videogames. I excelled in school, earning a full-tuition scholarship to college. After graduating early, I worked steadily at decent-paying jobs, although pecuniary astuteness was never something I mastered.

I did everything right—I was the first of my friends to buy a car and did it at eighteen. I paid for everything when we went out. All that meant I was successful. Right?

In many ways, I think I was always fated to captivity, destined for disaster. My parents were drug addicts. After the warrant came in, my uncle drove me to the police station and dropped a bomb: “You know you were born with drugs in your system, right?”

I had not known.

Addiction runs in my family. It’s embedded in my genes.

I got lucky. Like some seraphic dove, my paternal grandmother swooped in and took me under her wing. Even she got lucky; my mother never showed up to the custody hearing.

I think my unconscious drive to be so different from my parents—and several aunts and uncles, for that matter—is what made me so attracted to dangerous situations and people unlike me in the wrong ways. Always striving for perfection growing up instead of allowing myself the room to experiment and mess up manifested in seeking out trouble as an adult without knowing what I was doing. My friends became decent people with affinities for worse and worse things. One can only stand in the path of a tornado for so long before its force pulls you in, like a hapless bale of hay whose sole purpose is to be decimated. 

But in my desire to know about the world of my parents from which I so vehemently ran, I landed myself in a situation from which there was no escape. By falling into what Grandma Rose saved me from, I ruined everything she worked so hard to build for me, that I built for myself on top of her foundation. Curiosity had skewered the fucking cat.

And though I finally knew the truth about that night, I also knew for certain, that through action and inaction, decisions small and large, the only person responsible for my predicament was myself. 

Feelings of guilt, remorse, and worthlessness crashed over me as I listened to Judge Ianotti ask me the required questions about the deal my state-appointed attorney had brokered for me with the prosecutor.

For more than a moment, asking for the death penalty in an impassioned outburst seemed the most reasonable course of action. Why do I deserve to live as opposed to the innocent man I mowed down on that night eighteen months earlier?

I didn’t.

I told the judge the requisite answers to his questions: Yes, no, I do, I understand.

“I sentence you,” he said, his judicious voice sounding as though we were still underwater, “to eight years suspended after serving three, with three years’ probation to follow. With good time and other DOC programs, you may not serve the full three years. Good luck.”

The marshal cuffed me and led me out of the courtroom, onto an elevator, and into a bullpen under the courthouse.