The first time Rickzi Doh killed a man, he didn't pray. Not right away. Prayer was for clean hands, for Sunday mornings when his mother's voice carried the hymns over the hum of the radiator. Prayer was for men who hadn't felt a gun buck in their grip, hadn't watched a stranger's eyes go dull under a streetlight. No, Rickzi didn't pray until later, when the blood had dried to a crust on his knuckles, when the cops had stopped shouting, when the world had shrunk to a concrete cell and the silence that followed. That's when he begged God to unmake it all, to rewind the night like a spool of thread, to give him back the man he'd been before Clay died.
He sat now, months later, on the edge of a cot that smelled of sweat and iron. The cell was narrow, barely wider than his shoulders, with a sink that dripped like a metronome. A pencil stub lay on the floor, next to a sheet of paper he'd torn from a legal pad the public defender had left behind. Dear Ma, he'd written, the letters uneven, like a child's. He hadn't gotten further. What do you say to a woman who raised you to kneel before God when you've knelt instead in blood?
The cellblock was quiet tonight, the usual clamor of curses and clanging bars dulled to a murmur. Rickzi's fingers traced the edge of the paper, feeling its cheap grain. He thought of his mother's Bible, the one she kept on the kitchen table, its pages soft from years of her touch. "The Lord is my shepherd," she'd read to him as a boy, her voice steady even when the landlord pounded on the door for rent. He'd believed it then—that God walked beside him, that goodness was a shield. Now, at thirty-two, with a murder charge carved into his name, he wondered if God had ever been there at all.
He closed his eyes, and the alley came back. Not as a memory, but as a weight, pressing his ribs until he couldn't breathe. It was June, the air thick with diesel and salt from the docks. Rickzi had been walking home from the late shift, his boots heavy with warehouse dust, his pay stub crumpled in his pocket—forty hours for a check that wouldn't cover the electric bill. The city of Harren's Point never slept, its streets a tangle of neon and rust, where men like Rickzi moved like shadows between the cranes and the tenements. He'd taken the shortcut behind the cannery, the one that stank of fish and motor oil, because it shaved ten minutes off the trek to his apartment.
Clay was there, leaning against a dumpster, a bottle glinting in his hand. Rickzi knew him vaguely—a dockworker's son, the kind who wore his father's name like a crown. Clay Gideon, heir to a shipping empire, slumming it in Harren's Point to prove he could. His eyes were glassy, his shirt untucked, but there was a meanness in his grin that made Rickzi's stomach twist. "Hey, preacher boy," Clay slurred, stepping into his path. "Got a sermon for me?"
Rickzi kept his head down. He always did. His mother's voice echoed: "Turn the other cheek, baby. Ain't no fight worth your soul." But Clay didn't want a sermon. He wanted a fight, or something uglier. He shoved Rickzi, hard, and the bottle hit the ground, shattering like a gunshot. Rickzi stumbled, his palms scraping asphalt, and tasted blood where his lip split. "Walk away," he said, voice low, hoping it sounded braver than he felt.
Clay laughed, a sound like breaking glass, and pulled the gun from his waistband. It was small, black, the kind of thing that looked wrong in anyone's hand. "You think you're better than me?" he spat, swaying. "You think you get to just walk away?" He waved the gun, not aiming, not yet, but close enough that Rickzi's heart slammed against his ribs.
"I don't want trouble," Rickzi said, hands up, stepping back. His boot caught a shard of glass, and he winced, the pain sharp but distant. Clay was closer now, his breath sour with whiskey, his eyes wild. Rickzi's mind raced—run, fight, beg—but his body froze, the way it always had when his father yelled, when the foreman docked his pay for no reason. Move, he thought, but his legs were stone.
Clay lunged, the gun swinging wide, and Rickzi grabbed for it—not to take it, just to push it away. They fell, tangled, the pavement biting into Rickzi's spine. The gun was between them, cold and heavy, and Clay's fingers were on the trigger, but Rickzi's were there too, clawing, desperate. He didn't think about shooting, didn't think about killing. He thought about his mother's face, about the rent due tomorrow, about the way Clay's laugh sounded like every man who'd ever looked at him and seen nothing.
The shot was loud, too loud, a crack that split the world. Clay gasped, a wet, broken sound, and went still. Rickzi scrambled back, the gun falling from his hand, his chest heaving. Blood spread across Clay's shirt, dark and fast, pooling under him like spilled ink. "No," Rickzi whispered, crawling to him. "No, no, no." He pressed his hands to the wound, as if he could hold Clay together, as if he could undo the second that had changed everything. "Stay with me," he said, voice breaking. "Please, God, let him stay."
Clay's eyes found his, not angry now, just scared. His lips moved, but no words came. Then he was gone, his gaze empty, his chest still. Rickzi knelt there, shaking, his hands red, his breath ragged. The alley was quiet, the city holding its breath. He looked up, past the rooftops, to a sky that gave no answers. Why? he thought, not to Clay, not to himself, but to the God he'd trusted all his life. Why did you let this happen?
Sirens wailed, distant but closing. Rickzi didn't move. He stayed by Clay, one hand on his chest, as if waiting for a miracle that never came.