Endgame
        Chapter 5
 

Danny felt the needles ripping out of him, tubes flying as he lunged for Carmen. Pilar screamed out of the room for a nurse. Ray leapt to his feet detaching Danny’s death grip around Carmen’s shoulders. He needn’t have bothered. As Danny lifted his torso to grab his mother, a fervent agony raced up his back as if he had been set on fire, again.

He snapped backwards into the sheets, writhing, screaming.

A nurse hurriedly entered with a syringe of blessed oblivion. "He won’t remember any of this," she assured them.

Good, Carmen thought. This gave her time. She had no idea how she was going to convince Danny that she truly had nothing to do with Michelle’s death. When Danny grabbed her, and even while he lay fading, surrendering to the medication, his eyes never averted from hers. What she saw in them, what she read in them was;

I will kill you.

As Carmen stood looking out of the window into darkness, she replayed the last conversation she had with Danny, wincing at the memory. Twenty-four hours ago, he had quietly approached her desk at home.

"What is it Daniel?" she had asked, smiling.

"Ma-ma. I have a confession to make."

From there, he proceeded to tell her that he had been keeping tabs on Ben ever since Carmen and the lawyer had emerged from a private conference in her home regarding a tape recorder. The man that was minutes before marked for death, was suddenly a man who had endured, survived the wrath of a woman scorned, indeed, Carmen Santos scorned. Danny thought that Ben was holding something over Carmen, and he wanted to know exactly what it was. He grew suspicious of them both when the hired tail reported to Danny that he had seen Carmen and Ben enjoying a dinner together at The Towers restaurant.

"How very odd, Ma-ma, for you to be seen in public with a man that made you out for a fool," Danny spoke bitterly.

Danny proceeded to tell Carmen that while his employee stood watch, Danny broke into Ben’s apartment, searching for whatever Ben was holding over Carmen.

"Do you know where I found this, Ma-ma?" He held the tiny tape recorder only inches from her face. "On the nightstand beside his bed! He must’ve played it over and over before drifting off to sleep, Ma-ma," he said, laughing through angry tears, contempt rising in his voice.

"Danny, I can expl-"

"SHUT UP! Shut up and listen! Listen to a pathetic, soul-less monster."

And as she fought her own tears, Danny played the tape; Carmen’s confession to the near-murder of her own daughter.

Shaking his head in disbelief, "Michelle was right all along." Pointing at Carmen, he pusued, "She suspected you, she saw through you, the very moment we came into this room with you hovering over my bleeding sister, and yet, I yelled at her ‘Not now. Not now.’ I told her that my mother would never do anything to deliberately hurt her own daughter, never! Well, Ma-ma, you’ve made a fool out of me once again. Do you hate Michelle this much," he said waving the tape recorder at Carmen. Danny watched the expression of his mother’s face immediately transform from pleading to indignant disgust at the mere mention the name.

Venomously she spat out, "If it weren’t for that girl, none of this, none of this would have happened. I would still have Mick, I would still have you, and Pilar would never have been in danger because she would still be in Europe!"

"Unbelievable," Danny mumbled as he threw his hands in the air. Sadness laid mixed with his anger.

Carmen rejoiced in this. Danny’s angry words had always been betrayed by his eyes. He knew that she knew of the power she held over him. There was always a limit, an impassable boundary, to his contempt for her. Literally from birth Danny had been taught
the importance of family, especially, the sanctity of motherhood, the sanctity of his mother.

Respect deserved unto her without exception.

Carmen had watched Danny try to break free from these indoctrinations. She could see him struggle so within; Such was precisely why he had been raised to believe in this way-- to never be able to leave. Just as the devil had taken God’s good and used it for evil, so had Carmen done in teaching Danny about "family values." For her, it had no biblical or even vague moral premise; rather, it was to keep Danny at her "apron strings," as Ben so basely but accurately summated. It was to keep her from being thrown into prison at the hands of a Judas or worse. It was to keep Danny trapped within the confines of her world.

"Well, Ma-ma, you won’t have to worry about ‘that girl’ any longer," Danny taunted, "or me." Slapping the tape recorder into her hands, he declared, "You have just confessed your way out of your only remaining son."

As he turned to leave, Carmen threatened, "There is not a place on earth that I cannot find you and your precious Michelle."

Slowly, Danny turned, "How typical," was his only reply.

With that, Carmen thought she had seen the last of her only son. She returned to the present with the thought of this last stare from her son as he lay sinking into a drug-induced slumber. It terrified her. For in it was revealed that her power over him, the struggle within him, was over--gone. Solitary, unrelenting hatred was all that remained.

Since I came to know of Michelle Bauer, I wanted her dead. I tried, repeatedly, and failed. Now, finally, my prayer answered, and I not only have nothing to do with it, I’ve got to prove as much or be killed by the hands of my own son.

Her mind ached at the irony of it all.

All the while Ray sat watching her every expression.