Blood on the Steps
The Capitol steps burned beneath Randolph Burke’s feet, the marble radiating heat under the oppressive August sun. He stood at the top, his back pressed to the cold stone of the Capitol doors, watching the mob below. They were a writhing sea of bodies, thousands of fists raised, faces twisted in rage. The sound of them, the roar of their voices, pounded in his ears like a drumbeat, relentless and unforgiving.
“Murderer!” they screamed, their words slicing through the thick air.
His heart was pounding. His chest felt tight. Sweat poured down his back, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, slick with perspiration. The smell of gasoline from the city buses mixed with the acrid stench of burning garbage bins. The air was suffocating, and Randolph fought to breathe.
His fingers wrapped around the penny in his pocket, the lucky charm he had carried for years, worn smooth by his thumb. It had always been there for him, through every deal, every scandal, every betrayal. But now, in the face of the mob, it was nothing more than a piece of metal.
The crowd surged forward, crashing into the police barricades, shoving back the officers who tried in vain to hold the line. They were chanting his name now, but it wasn’t praise. They weren’t here to support him. They were here for vengeance.
“Blood on your hands!”
Randolph’s stomach turned. His fingers tightened on the penny as if it could somehow pull him back from the edge of this disaster. His eyes swept the crowd, looking for an escape, but there was none. His name was stained. The leaked documents had seen to that. The private contracts, the prison labor, the campaign money—all exposed. His signature was on every deal. Every death. Every betrayal.
A flicker of motion caught his eye, and there he was—James Crandall, stepping from the shadow of a marble column. Crandall wore that damn hat, wide-brimmed and smug, casting a shadow over his eyes as he sauntered toward Randolph with that slow, measured gait. His lips curled into a cruel smile, the kind that told Randolph he had been planning this for years.
Crandall had been the one to expose him, to leak the documents, to turn the press and the people against him. But Randolph couldn’t even muster anger anymore. It was drowned out by the wave of fear crashing through him.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this time,” Crandall said, his voice smooth, cold. He tipped his hat slightly, mocking him. “Quite the crowd, isn’t it? They’re not here for a speech, Randolph. They’re here to watch you fall.”
Randolph’s mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He swallowed hard, the sound of it lost in the noise of the crowd. He tried to speak, but his throat closed up. There were no words. Nothing he could say that would save him now.
“Do you think they’ll stop, Crandall?” Randolph managed to rasp, his voice raw. “Do you think this ends with me?”
Crandall’s smile widened, cold and cruel. “It doesn’t matter what happens next. What matters is that you won’t be around to see it.”
Randolph could feel the hatred radiating from the crowd as they broke through the final barricade. The riot police were overrun, their batons useless as the protesters surged up the steps, pushing closer, their eyes locked on him. The heat from their bodies felt like a furnace, the smell of sweat and anger overwhelming. His legs weakened, and he gripped the penny tighter, as if it could ground him in the chaos.
The first fist hit him square in the side, knocking the air from his lungs. He gasped, doubling over as a second blow landed, sharp and hard against his jaw. The world blurred. Hands grabbed at him, tearing him from the marble steps, dragging him into the fray. He stumbled, his body slamming against the ground.
Pain. Pain and heat. His head spun, his vision narrowing as the mob swarmed him, fists and feet raining down, crushing his ribs, his legs, his chest. His mouth filled with blood, the taste sharp and metallic, and he felt his breath slipping away.
And then, with every hit, his life began to flash before his eyes.
The first memory struck as hard as the boot to his ribs. He was twenty-three, fresh out of law school, sitting across the table from an old man whose life he was about to destroy. The man had been a client—he owned a small business, a restaurant—but Randolph had been bought off by a competitor, a bigger chain, and he had sold the old man out. He had smiled as the old man cried, signed the papers, and watched his business crumble.
The boot came down again, harder this time, and Randolph choked on his own breath. He saw the old man’s face, wet with tears, and he remembered how little it had meant to him then.
Another punch, and another memory. He was in his thirties now, in a dimly lit backroom of a country club. The cigar smoke hung thick in the air as Randolph shook hands with a senator twice his age. They had just agreed to kill a piece of legislation that would have reformed housing for low-income families. Randolph had pocketed a quarter of a million dollars for his role in its demise. He had spent the money on a second home in the Hamptons, smiling as he raised a glass of champagne with his wife.
A fist connected with his face, snapping his head to the side. His teeth rattled in his skull as he saw the families who had been denied housing, remembered the protests he had ignored.
The blows came faster now. His body crumpled, knees hitting the marble. His ribs cracked under the weight of the crowd. He tried to crawl, but his hands slipped in the blood pooling around him—his blood, staining the steps.
Another memory. He was forty, standing in a dimly lit alley behind a hotel in New Orleans. A man stood before him, shaking, desperate. He had been a whistleblower, ready to expose corruption in the energy sector. But Randolph had made him disappear. A few bribes to the right people, a favor called in, and the man was never heard from again. Randolph had slept well that night.
A boot slammed into his spine, and Randolph gasped, the memory fading as the crowd closed in tighter, their voices growing louder.
He felt the bones in his wrist snap under the weight of someone’s heel, and his mind raced to his most recent crime—the one that had brought him here. The prison labor contracts. He had signed them with a smile, knowing full well what he was doing. Hundreds of civil rights protesters had been arrested in the South. The prisons were overcrowded, the conditions inhumane, and yet he had allowed the corporations to use them for labor, to work them to death for pennies while he lined his pockets. Men had died in those cells—beaten, starved, forgotten. And Randolph had signed off on every deal.
He saw their faces now, battered and broken. He saw the young woman in the crowd below, the one who had held her brother’s picture. He had been one of them—one of the men who had died in that prison because of Randolph’s greed.
Another kick, and he felt his ribs crack. The pain was blinding, but it wasn’t enough to wash away the memories, the weight of his own sins pressing down on him. He had destroyed lives, ruined families, sold his soul for money and power. And now, it was all crashing down on him.
The world darkened, his vision narrowing to a pinprick of light. The voices of the crowd grew distant, muffled, like they were underwater. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He tasted blood, thick and coppery, on his tongue.
And then, through the haze of pain and darkness, he heard Crandall’s voice one last time, low and cold, the final nail struck hard.
“I’ll see you in hell, Randolph,” Crandall called, as he reached down and pulled the lucky penny from Randolph’s grasp. “I’m off to send your pretty daughter flowers.”
“As the world faded to black,” would say a historian, in a book about corrupt politicians, some 35 years later, “Randolph Burke—the man who had once believed himself untouchable—died alone, blood pooling around him on the Capitol steps—a fitting end for an unbefitting Senator.”
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