Death

Why do people die? Why don't some die? Why can't people all die at the same age?

Why won't you die?

To forge a religion

If you were confused by the string of posts that I have been making that have all been started by the word "to," allow me to explain.

I am an agnostic person. That means that I do not believe in any religion, simply because of the lack of evidence. If per se, you were do provide me with proof that Christianity or Islam were true, I would most likely believe in that religion. I like to compare this to the episode of "Rick and Morty" in which people begin to worship floating heads in the sky because they know that they are real.

I wanted to start my own religion. Although I do not think that I got any followers of this religion, I still made it, and will not go back on it. I wanted to prove that all you have to do to in order to start a religion is speak logically. This is what happens in most religious books, such as the Holy Bible, or the Qur'an. I do not want any backlash for this, and I am not saying these religions are absolutely made up. I just wanted to prove how easy it would be.

There will be no more of these types of posts.

To feel what it is

To feel what it is to lose a loved one, you must first understand what a loved one is. A loved one is a person that you show an emotional connection that is further than a mild friendship. A loved one is someone that you know more about than you do yourself. You understand their psychology, and where they are coming from.

To feel what it is to lose them, you must either lose them or die yourself. People who do this have described the feeling to be similar.

To drive a duck

To drive a duck to madness, you must cut off connections to other ducks. Ducks, like humans, are social beings. We must communicate, and so must they. 

If you do this, you can drive any social being to madness.

To own a man

To own a man, you must think like a man. You must understand that people are but animals. If you have eaten a pig, you already know what a man tastes like. If you have shown your fellow man what you want from them, you are already tainted with desire.

If you own a man, then you will not need to wonder whether you are tainted, for you already are. You have been tainted since you decided you wanted to eat from your mother's breast. All desire taints you. Even the desire to live.

If you understand this, then you have nothing to worry of. You may do what you want, simply because you want to do it. there is no further way to taint yourself.

So just go die.

To feel pain

To feel pain, you have to let go of your true life. If you do not do this, you will not feel empty. If you do not feel empty, you do not feel pain.

To feel pain, you have to understand that pain is not physical. It is not in the heart, brain, or lungs. It is beyond your control.

The free episode of Vsause's mind field had Michael leave his life behind to be in a room with absolutely nothing for a full three days. If you would do this, you would have gotten closer to being in pain than anyone else has ever done.

To feel pain, you have to know that you are worthless. If you did the math, your life wouldn't be worth more than 12000 dollars. You have no reason to live other than people telling you to. But it cannot be anyone that matters to you that tells you this. That would be having something.

To feel pain, you much be in such isolation, that you lose a grip on what life is itself.

To feel normal

To feel normal, you have to be normal. To be normal, you have to think normal. To think normal, you must isolate yourself from other people.

There have recently been studies that show that if someone tells you that they remember something one way, it may affect how you remember it. Could this be true for thoughts? Or, is this just looking too far into psychology? Why can't people just understand what I mean?

If you were told you were different, how would you feel? What if you were told you could become normal? Would you take the chance?

I know how to be normal. I just block out what people tell me to block out, and then it's over. I never feel anything bad after that. 

To understand what I mean

To understand what I mean, you would need to know what I mean. You would need to see what I am saying, and you would need to think about it, not as a statement, but as a chapter in my life.

To understand what I mean, you would have to know me personally, and you would have to know more intimately than you could possibly imagine. 

To understand what I mean, you would have to be me.

To make money

To make money, you have to kill. You have to scam. You have to sell. You have to deal. You have to make. 

It doesn't matter what you think, feel, or act. You rip off your family, friends, and anything inbetween. 

But most of all, you have to have a passable adsense account.

To be fair

To be fair is to ride the wave of life with such neutrality that it seems that you aren't. To be fair is to make yourself hidden in the back of people's minds, just a glimmer, not a shine. To be fair is to cut off all indication that you do anything.

For you see, fair is a neutral term. It means no one party or group is more important than any other. It means that you have no reason to think about one person better than you think about someone else. However, even if this is true. Even if you have no reason to think of someone better or someone worse. Even if you are as neutral as you can be. It is impossible to be fair.

Because you are a human. Not a collection of stores, restaurants, rides, and attractions. 

To do this

To do this is incredible. An excitement. A treasure. A time to think about what you want, and to want what you think.

It is a time to feel wealthy, and a time to feel secure. But, it isn't a time to feel bad about anything you've done.

To do this is to feel like you truly are great. But not a time to feel superior in any way.

And what is this?

To do this, is to kill a man

Next

Sweat will be released within the next two weeks. Stay tuned to this station for updates.

Same place. Different time.

-Roci

rewrite:blood-epilouge

Epilogue

Then I woke up.

I lifted myself off of the pavement outside of the airport. I was weak, and my chest hurt. I knew where I was. I didn’t know who took me.

Whoever they were, they wanted me to leave.

I could feel the tickets I had bought a couple days ago for salt lake city in my pocket. No luggage. No problem.

I went through security, got on my flight at 9:00 pm on new year's night. When we were off, it was January second, 2017.

And I guess that’s it.

rewrite:blood-ch5

Chapter 5

Carletta was in front of me, and she had a man wearing a mask standing behind her, holding a shotgun. When I looked up, the man said “where’s my money.”

“What money? Who are you?”

“You owe me, because you were supposed to sell the coke. Give me the goddamn money.”

Okay, he had a gun, the room was small, and he wanted money. I knew his name. Gabriel Gonzales. He was my boss in albuquerque. I sold Coke for him. When I didn’t sell coke, he would kill someone. So, I sold the coke. But I didn’t this time. I was going to leave. I was going to tell him. He was distant, and high constantly. I didn’t. Big mistake.

“Fine.” he said, disappointed as he pressed the gun to the side of Carletta’s skull, and pulled the trigger, killing her.

“Dude, what the shit!”

“Give me that money, man.”

“Okay, shit.”

He kicked me out, and I ran back over to my house, where James and the white kid were waiting for me. “It’s going down.” I exclaimed as I walked in. they knew just what it meant, and they both stood up and grabbed all the guns we owned.

Which was four.

One 44 revolver, one Uzi, one Hunting rifle, one Glock. That’s all we needed. James was the gang banger. He got the Uzi. I was slow and careful. I got the revolver. The white kid was a sharp shooter. He got the Hunting rifle and the Glock if things got hairy too close by.

Together we were the three assholes who were going to kill other assholes because we owed them money.

The Hunting rifle was silenced. It wouldn’t make a sound. The other guns weren’t. So we needed to kill as many as we could and get out of there within 18 minutes. We timed it. That’s how long it takes the cops to get there.

We all got ready. Loaded clips. Punched each other in the stomach. The usual stuff. When we got there, the people inside were all getting ready to come over to our house for the money.

James took point, I was behind. The white kid was 500 yards away. It was fixing to be a great day.

James kicked open the door, allowing it to swing halfway open before he swept the room. One full clip and three people were hit hard enough they were down. Next was me. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. everybody else was dead. Next room was more of the same. Bang bang, you’re dead. The white kid shot the boss as he shot me in the arm. When we got home, we picked at my wound and tried to fix it. We really didn’t.

“Well shit. Do you think we’ll get away with it?” asked James. He was scared, which makes sense. We had just killed a lot of people.

My wound starting hurting more and more as the adrenaline calmed down. “Yeah. according to this city, we have never done anything wrong. We’re model citizens.”

That night, I slept sweeter than usual. On the chair next to the door. Drunk off of whiskey, high off weed, I went to bed like a baby.

rewrite:blood-ch4

Chapter 4

I could see a cut on my arm, long, deep. The windshield was almost broken, so I kicked it out. I got out of the car, and helped Carletta get out herself. She was less hurt than me, but less strong all the same. I had hit the gym quite a bit in the last month. We were on our way to get to Cheddar’s scratch kitchen, closer to the west-side. I was driving, and the freeway was mostly empty. We were riding around 85 miles per hour. A drunk driver skidded onto the road from the merging lane, and hit me from behind. We swerved and span out. What a way to get to know somebody.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, scared the cut only looked minor.

“I’m fine, just a little hurt.”

“Okay. Well, i’m gonna call the cops.”

“Alright, go for it.” she was shaken up. So was I. we could have died. We weren’t exactly going slowly. I took a look at the car. It was definitely totaled. The other car wasn’t. I ran over to the man in his car. The operator answered, and I said “hello, I was just in a car accident on I-40, and I don’t think the other guy is gonna be okay.”

“Okay sir, i’ll put you through to the police, do you know the nearest mile marker.

“Yes, it would be 49.”

“There should be some police there in a moment.”

“Thank you.”

I hung up, and looked at the man in his car. He had his head on the dashboard, and I could see blood seeping out of the sides.

Carletta ran up next to me to look at him. “Jeez, he really got fucked up.”

“That could have been us.”

She didn’t want to think about that. I was confused. Why is it that this guy could be dead, but our car took more damage, and flipped over, and we survived. I even passed out. Why would he die?

Carletta ran up to the window, and knocked on the glass. “Hello, are you okay.”

There was no response to her question. He was most definitely dead. A few minutes, a squad car and an ambulance pulled up next to the wreck. They set up cones, and pried the man’s car door open, to reveal that the man was more hurt than me and Carletta had thought. They pulled him off the dashboard and he woke up. I could see four deep cuts, and a broken nose that were obvious. When he woke up, he let out a painful scream, and yelled “fuck” nice and loud so everyone could hear it.

When he got up and started trying to walk. He fell right over. He was a mixture of drunk, and injured. The paramedics helped him up, and then to the ambulance. He had a compound fracture in his right leg, and a broken bone that was split cleanly, so skin and muscle dangled the rest of his forearm. He mumbled something mean and painful. Once they got him in the ambulance, they shoved some morphine in his arm. When he started screaming, they restrained him, to make sure they would be able to give him proper medical treatment. I could see him scream after every single bump in the road. The expression on his face told me he was in pain, even before the accident.

One of the paramedics saw the cut on my arm and sat me down to check it out. He dabbed on rubbing alcohol and it burned my skin. When he was done, he put on a cloth bandage, and let me go on my merry fucking way.

I called a cab for Carletta, and another for me. They both came around the same time. I got in mine, and Carletta got in her’s, because we weren’t romantic. We just left. That was the end. The taxi driver took me to my apartment, and I could see James and the white kid sitting inside. When I walked in, they were both tied into wooden chairs, and somebody hit me in the back of the head with a frying pan. In my mind’s eye, I could see the words “wake up.”

Then I woke up.

James had a few of his ribs broken from the fall. After I called 911, a paramedic and a police car pulled up. James was still breathing, beside the fact that he had fallen off the second story, after breaking glass. Some shards were sticking out of his legs, so he couldn’t walk.

James had always thought that it was my fault that he had gotten into a gang, and essentially that I was the reason that the three of us were in so much trouble all the time. Every time something bad would happen to me, he would tell em about it. He would always say something like, “why did you do this to us?” or “what were you thinking?” For some reason, in his mind, I was always the bad guy.

This wasn’t the first time he had tried to kill the white kid either. One time he pointed a gun and stuck it right into his face, and started screaming demands at him. The white kid met the demands, which were step the fuck off, and in return, James agreed not to blow his head off, and leave me with the gun.

I knew that James was the type of person that would do anything and everything that he was told. One time, I asked him to kill some random person, just because he was behind on coke money, and James slit his throat right there. James didn’t care about his actions. If there was nobody to hold him back, James would kill, slaughter and otherwise rape anybody he wanted to. If he wanted to do it, we would, no questions asked.

The police questioned me. I told them all about James. Well, not really. I didn’t tell him he had a history of violence, that we were both in a gang, or that I had come from Tallahassee. So basically, I was lying through my teeth to this police officer. Once I told him the entire story, I knew what I needed to do. It was time to run away. Just one more time.

The hotel that we stayed at was high end, and right near the airport. I took about 15 minutes and walked over there. The ticket to salt lake city was about $400. Which was not too much for me, because from the time I started selling coke in albuquerque, I had already made about $20,000. I walked a few blocks over and got a soda from some restaurant I forget the name of. The flight was set to leave in about five hours. I had all the tie in the world to do basically whatever I wanted. But I still needed to protect myself.

I had a gun, a knife, and a corkscrew on me. I dumped them all in a nearby trash can so that security wouldn’t give me too much trouble. I was on my way back to the airport, when something had struck me in the back. It was sharp, and a loud bang followed. I fell onto my stomach. As I heard people screaming and could feel the presence of somebody coming closer and closer to me. He flipped me onto my back, and I could see his colombian smile under his bushy mustache before he said “wake up.”

Then I woke up.

The room was musky and dirty. There was nobody near me. I sat in a twelve inch chair that only held half of my body. I was leaning to my left with a door sitting in front of me. There was a wall directly on either side. It was dark, and all that was lighting the room was a small 50 watt light bulb above me. I could barely stand up, because the door was so close to my face. The knob twisted before I touched it, and James was on the other side.

He pulled me out, and I fell over. He helped me up to my feet and said “dude, are you alright.”

“Yeah, just haven’t really moved for a few hours.”

The room outside was the living room of Carletta’s house. She let us stay there for a few nights while we had our apartment bug-bombed. We had just moved in, and there was already so many cockroaches inside, we couldn’t sleep.

I stepped up, and we walked into the next room over, where Carletta had let out some cereal for us all to eat, and the white kid had already poured himself some fruity pebbles.

We both sat down and Carletta said “Hi. How much are you guys gonna eat.”

“We haven’t eaten in three days.”

“Answer the question.” she said, in a joking manner.

James thought she was serious, and said “ I’m fucking hungry.”

She looked at him kind of confused as her smile changed. She walked away, just to get away from him.

“Good job man.” the white kid told me, and I was just as confused as Carletta was.

When we were done, we all left the house as fast as we could. We didn’t want the same thing that happens every time we are somebody’s guest. Which was that our host dies. We decided to head  over to the Felony to get some coffee. Carletta didn’t like the smell so she wouldn’t let us drink any in her house or when we stayed in the motel.

The Felony seemed more claustrophobic than ever before, and we sat down. Coffee smelled strong and we all paid a bit for our coffee, and booked it. We didn’t want anybody to find out where we were. Especially any police. We wanted to avoid anybody in our gang, so we wouldn’t have any more jobs to do. We didn’t want any police to know where we were because we have killed plenty of people in Albuquerque, and we didn’t want to got to jail very much.

Once we were a few blocks away, we decided to stop and look at the construction happening on central. They were just starting to dig up the road. The days were about 80 degrees, and I was very sure that the workers for the city were hot as shit out there. They were getting ready to put in some trolley system or some shit that everybody was bitching about. I didn’t understand it, but it did make it harder to get around. You mostly had to walk, and there was a much higher charge for taxis.

We all walked around, and didn’t do much the rest of the day but wait for the bug bomb to clear out of our house. When it was done, the exterminators called me and told us about it. We walked about ten blocks back and made it back to our house. It stank, but none of us were sick.

I slept on a bed that folded out from our couch, James and the white kid took a lumpy, stained and disgusting piece of shit in the only other room. I stayed up late listening to music. It was almost like we were back in Tallahassee again.

That was, until somebody decided to try and break in.

Behind the couch, was a window. Somehow, despite the lock and the fact that we were living on the third floor, somebody opened it up and jumped over me to try and steal our shit. He didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t know who he was. Maybe he was on of our clients. He saw our shitty tv, and moved into the room that James and the white kid were in. I stood up, and pulled out my gun. He could hear me and turned the light on in the room I was in. I was already pointing the gun at him, and he was scared as shit.

I got a good look at him. He was maybe 20. Scrawny as shit, and unarmed. His hair was dirty, and so was his clothes. He stood there silent, as he could hear James and the white kid waking up and getting out of bed in the room behind him. He looked like he was in so much fear, that he was going to piss himself. I told him “You picked the wrong house, motherfucker.” and cocked my gun.

James got the shotgun in the next room and pressed it against the back of this kid’s head. He started crying. He begged “Please don’t kill me. Please.”

I whispered, “you’re gonna jump out the window then.”

James poked him with the shotgun, directing him back the way he came. His hands were up, as he walked slowly toward the couch, and stepped up onto it. He put both his hands on the windowsill, and jumped onto the pavement. I heard a crack, and a scream. I knew he broke a lot of bones. I didn’t call a paramedic. He knew what he as doing could get him hurt, and it did.

I went to bed. I was tired as shit, so it didn’t take too long. I had a dream where I was in a closet, and somebody busted open the door and hit both my knees with a hammer before screaming at me to wake up.

Then I woke up.

Carletta was sitting across from me. So was the white kid and James. Block wooden chairs held them still, as they looked at me. They weren’t even tied up. No duct tape. Just sitting in a room. The room was an interrogation. As I looked to the side, I could see a baby blue room, and one way glass. We were all there in the investigation of the kid who leaped from our window. He was trying to press charges. We knew he wouldn’t win. He broke into our house. We all knew what happened. I mean, I knew everything. But I told them what happened. They believed me, because it seemed to all line up. Also, I didn’t lie to James and the white kid that often.

A police officer walked in, and sat down at the end of the table to my right. “Good afternoon.”

“You too.” I said, trying to seem polite.

There is something that I have learned about police officers. I mean, you have to have learned something if you have to evade getting in trouble as many times as I have. You just act polite, and be extremely nice to them. Pretend you haven’t been in trouble. Have them explain all the charges, rather than acting like you know them. Try and joke around.

Most of all, act like the good guy. Make the other person look as bad as you can. It will make them look worse as a person. Even though you do this, don’t put yourself on a pedestal. Gloating makes you seem like a worse person.

“What happened here.” said carletta. She was genuinely concerned.

We didn’t have a lawyer present. That makes it look like you don’t need somebody telling you whether what the next thing you say will be incriminating. Besides, I was right. The kid came into our house, and we pointed guns we bought. Illegally. Shit. maybe we did need a lawyer.

“Well, the boy is saying that you invited him in and threatened to kill him if he didn’t jump out of the window. He is saying that you lured him into your house with the promise of an illegal job, selling drugs. All we need is your statements.” The cop said all this with a small smile. I think he knew that the kid came in through the window. He was already on our side. I don’t totally know why.

“I wasn’t there,” said Carletta. And it’s true. She wasn’t.

“Yes, well, you did use to lease the apartment, didn’t you? Because if you did, you could be liable to it again.”

“Well I did. I moved out years ago. Why would it possibly matter.”

“There’s just a possibility that you could have been involved.”

I could feel a thumping in my head. From the back of it. It was almost like somebody was hitting me repeatedly. I could hear this strange gunshot kind of sound too.

“Well, see what happened was that Me and the white kid were both sleeping, right. And all of a sudden we wake up because our door was wide open and the light was on in the other room. I sat up far and I could hear Gerry yelling at this kid in the other room. He had his gun out, so I reached behind the nightstand, and grabbed the shotgun. I walked up behind the kid and pressed the gun behind his head. He let out a whimper and begged not to die. So we said ‘okay’ and made him jump out the window. We thought that would be a good punishment for him. We didn’t call any cops.” James seemed smart. Smarter than usual.

Sometimes I forget that James is black.

The cop looked at the rest of us and we all nodded our heads.

“Well, his statement…” he was cut off by Carletta.

“Look, we told you the whole thing, can we just go to a holding cell or something.” she was breaking all my rules when dealing with police. She cut him off, talked in a smart ass voice, and she was demanding action be taken in her favor. I had to do something. But I didn’t.

“Okay.” said the policeman, seeming more satisfied with the situation than they usually are.

When he left the room to get paperwork, we all leaned over to James. This was the first time he had spoken up to someone that was superior to him, without killing them with a knife of course. The cop walked back in and let us go. They questioned the kid again and he came clean after hearing our statement. We were free to go, after we signed a couple papers. When we left, we all went to our respective homes and went to bed.

Then I woke up.

rewrite:blood-ch3

Chapter 3

Well, it wasn’t right after that. Maybe 30 seconds after.

When I got up, there was a horrible, sharp pain in my side. My hand naturally went to my side, feeling bandages around my stomach. There was blood on it. I had been shot. After this, I got to know my surroundings. I looked up to see a white room, stained with blood, spit and shit. To my left was a metal door. There was a banging on the other side. I heard a voice, speaking in an accent, sort of colombian, “open the fucking door.”

I stood up. I didn’t know where I was but I had a bullet wound and there were angry voices on the other side of a banging door. I walked around, trying to find any sense of direction as to where James and the white kid went. I became frantic, as memories rushed back into me. I remembered killing, me, killing a lot of people. I remembered doing drugs. I knew why I was in this situation.

And suddenly, I knew where I was.

I walked over to an open window. My scar was fresh. It hurt like hell. I could see James and the white kid a few blocks away. I looked down. There was a stant of a roof that I was over. Whatever building I was in, I was on the third floor. I started thinking. I could jump across to that ledge, and then fall on the dumpster. Or I could climb to another room.

I thought too long. The door behind me burst open, despite the bolt latch locking it shut. A man with deep, mexican looking skin burst in, one more person behind him. He whipped out one of those comically large barreled revolvers and said, “don’t move,” in a sharp colombian accent.

I jumped out of that window.

As I hit the ground, I heard a crack. I didn’t care. I had adrenaline and what I assumed was cocaine rushing through my veins. I ran in the direction that I saw James and the white kid running in. I couldn’t see them, but I knew where they were going. They were heading toward The Felony Cafe in Albuquerque, New-fucking-Mexico.

I ran across the street, and remembered the gun resting on my back. I ran twelve blocks before getting to the felony, to find James and the white kid inside, drinking tall, hot coffee drinks, and trying to grip them as hard as they could to warm their hands from the cold outside of which they had just escaped. When I walked in, we made eye contact, and I walked to the counter to order a piping hot americano. I sat down at the table they were already at, in this small, musky coffee shop. They looked at me, amazed. Or at least James was amazed. The white kid just sort of looked out the window at nothing, looking disinterested at me being alive. Again, sometimes I forget that James is black.

“How the hell did you get out of there?” James asked, looking at my leg. “What happened here?”

“Oh,” I said, starting to feel the sting of a broken bone in my leg, “I guess that happens when you jump off of a three story building.

“Well, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“UNM’s isn’t far from here,” said the white kid, cutting into a conversation while still staring out a window.

We took the bus. We didn’t exactly want to pay actual money to get five blocks away. When I got there, we all sat in the waiting room at the ER for about ten minutes, and a doctor called us to get my leg checked out. I was disappointed when his first question was, “how did all this happen?”

When he asked this, I was debating in my mind which lie to tell him. I settled on “I just tripped kind a hard I guess.”

“Really. You tripped,” he said, in disbelief, “and then somebody hit your leg with a baseball bat right? Because this is a pretty bad break.”

“I may have tripped out of a window.”

“Right. Well let's set it.” he said before pushing my leg uncomfortably to the side, making me hear a crack. “Okay, come here,” he said, signalling me to sit near the end of the padded seat I was on. He had pushed a wheelchair to the end I was scooting to, and I plopped myself down, harshly, into the seat.

We wheeled for a little while toward a sign that pointed to the right, saying BONES AND CASTS in large comic sans letters. We turned and he tried to make small talk. “So, how long have you been living in new mexico?”

“Just since this summer.”

“Oh, well did you apply for the university?”

“No, i’m just here with some friends for work.”

“Where are you from?”

“Tallahassee.”  the hall felt insanely long.

“What do you do for work?”

“Well, we actually just recently got fired.”

“Okay, then what did you do for work?”

I've had very few jobs, but me and my friends have been bulking up since we have gotten to Albuquerque, mainly just to seem more intimidating to clients. So what was I supposed to tell him.

“I work in construction.”

“Oh, really. You working on digging up that road?”

“I was. For a little while.”

We finally arrived at another room where they had me sit in a chair that had a gigantic extendable leg coming out of it. I lifted myself into the chair, and propped my leg up.

“Well, see, we’re gonna have to break it again.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t set right.”

“You just set it five minutes ago.”

“I did it wrong.”

“Are you lying to me.”

“Um”-I could see him getting more and more nervous, “no.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not, we have to do it.”

“I said don’t fucking lie to me”-I looked him dead in the eye, and tried to look intimidating. I gripped his arm as hard as I could with both hands-“or I might have to break it.”

He didn’t give me any more trouble. My leg got a walking cast, and I walked right out of the hospital.

James and the white kid waited for me outside, in the waiting room, getting coughed on and having to deal with people that seemed like they were about to die, right there. When I walked in the room, they both shot up out of their chairs and we walked back outside. The cold air hit us with force. There was a storm coming.

That room I was in. That was our apartment. It was on the top story of some building that was just a little bit away from the university. We didn’t have a place to stay.

“Let’s go over by the airport,” I said, sounding smart, “they have a shit load of hotels over there.”

A bus ride and a 20 minute walk left us at night time, plopping no luggage at a suite. James claimed one bed, the white kid at the other, and me on the chair.

I stared out the window as the four o’clock sunny skies turned into 5:30 dark night skies. The storm started. First rain, then hail, then snow. I stared as people ran, avoiding golfball sized hail, of which dented cars and broke windows. Half an hour later, it was a clear cold night.

“This jagged weather,” I said, “what the shit does it do? It rains for half an hour, then the skies are clear. No matter this shitty state has a drought.”

Sleeping on the couch was hard. While me, the guy with a broken leg was sleeping on a hard, decorative object in a room with two beds, with two people to fill them. All because we were cheap people.

When I woke up, it was like I was in a different state. The roads were skidded with ice, snow was on the ground, and James was watching spongebob. Loudly.

“Ha,” he would say after every joke.

“Shut up,” I said.

“Ha,” again, this was annoying. “Ha.”

Sometimes I forget James is black.

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” he looked jaggedly at me.

“James.”

“Ha.”

James stood up, and walked toward me. As he stood, I could see the white kid sitting in front of the door, dead. He had fallen on the door, and blood skidded on the white paint.

“Ha.”

James had blood on his right arm, just like he had when he killed that gang leader. He walked menacing to me. I hadn’t processed the situation.

“Ha.”

James was very close. Closer than he ever had been before. Closer than he had ever been to me. He pulled out a knife and got ready to stab me.

“Ha.”

I stood up, and thought about how to get myself out of the current situation. It had been clear that James was mentally unstable for a while now. He just would stay with us, and we liked him enough.

“Ha.”

He lunged himself toward me. The force of his body hit the window all at once, and it broke. He fell to the ground two stories below. The knife he was carrying pushed into his neck. He was dead.

I rushed to the white kid. He had knife wounds in his neck. I rushed to the phone on the nightstand in between the beds. I dialed only 9 before the white kid was behind me.

“Wake up. Wake up now. It is time to go. Get the fuck up.”

Then I woke up.

When I woke up, I was hanging from the ceiling. I could feel cold metal in the backs of my feet. I was cold. In front of me was a metal door. To my left was meat. To my right was meat. I was in a freezer.

Behind me, I could hear somebody talking to me. “Let’s go,” said the white kid as he cut me down from where I was.

I got a better look. Behind me was the white kid and James, and we were all locked in the freezer, which became more and more obvious as we banged more and more on the door. I walked around the room, feeling less claustrophobic than I thought I would. The cold started getting to me. I wasn’t used to it ever being under 50 degrees in Tallahassee. I knew that outside that door was the warm florida air, that would fill my lungs, making the walk in freezer seem colder than ever. There was a small chair in the edge of the room, which, as far as I know, was where either James or the white kid broke out of. They chose some cheap wood.

The door in front of me wasn’t so much bloody as it was just wet. That was strange, because it was definitely under 30 degrees in here. I walked and touched the door. The water on the door turned to ice. My hand was frozen inside of it. I was stuck. James and the white kid both pulled on me as hard as they could. They couldn’t break me free.

“Shit, what is happening?” I said, confused and scared.

“You’re freezing,” James said, acting like he knew anything about the current situation.

“Well, what do we do?”

“Nothing,” said the white kid, getting more and more serious, and looking deadly.

Shit. I was going to die. All this was my fault. Tallahasse was on the other side of the door, and I was stuck in the lock in freezer at subway. I knew why we were in here too. I fucked over the gang by killing leaders, and they jung me by my Achilles tendon, and they were going to kill me. And now, I have to be awake for it.

Then my old boss opened the door. I fell over onto the ground, and looked up at him. “What are you doing here?”

As far as I know those were his last words. He was shot through his head from the side, and I got up and ran. The airport was four blocks away and I knew how to get there. We were already going to go, so we bought tickets. The flight was in an hour. No luggage. No problems. We ran out the door faster than we ran when we killed those people. The warm florida night hit me like a bullet. I took a big breath in, feeling the humidity in my throat. It was august, and it was hot. 80 degrees felt good after almost freezing to death.

We ran hard and fast all the way to the airport. We planned to go to albuquerque, just because we heard they have good connections. Like, drug connections. We were already going to be on the run from the bloods for the rest of our lives. We may as well get paid for it. The banditos, they are a gang in Albuquerque, Mexican. They mostly just ride motorcycles around. They are pretty cool. We wanted to be one.

The plane was barely even boarding by the time we got there, but there was no possible way that the bloods knew which plane we were getting on. We got on, and in no time we were on our way to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The flight had one stop in Atlanta, for some reason, and then we went to the Sunport Airport, on the east side of Albuquerque.

So, Albuquerque is a decent sized town. Like, there’s a downtown, and uptown, west side, east side. Fucking everything. On the east side is the air force base, and the University and College. We spent most of our time on the east side, because we were scared of the west side. We didn’t know shit about it. And there was enough shit on the east side, that we wouldn’t get bored, pretty much ever. Especially since we were coming from a different state.

That day, we checked into a cheap motel on central avenue. We didn’t have that much money, between us never getting paid, and our bosses we had killed not carrying too much cash. The room had one squeaky bed, that felt like shit, a Tv on the wall, and  a small bathroom, with no shower. It was as basic as it got. We all slept on the same bed, mostly because we were scared of there being a literal monster under it, and laid close together, because where it was humid as shit in florida, here it was the opposite. The highest points of albuquerque are around 7000 feet high, and the lowest around 4000. Suck it, Denver.

The city isn’t too windy, just really dry. To the west was a mountain. It was magnificent at first sight, but every other time after that, it was just a background piece. The day after, we were all greeted with a wake up call consisting of a loud, hard knock, and a get the hell up. When I walked outside, light was shining off all the cars, and it was around 80 degrees. James came outside with me, and the white kid followed soon after. We all stared at the mountain, just for a few seconds. Then, James taps on my shoulder, and I look behind myself to see him standing there, with a grin on his face, before he said “wake up.”

Then I woke up.

I was sitting in my childhood home. There was a large tv set to my right. The couch I was on was grungy and disgusting. I could see James frantically looking around the room for money.

“Why aren’t you helping?” he said, looking at me, staring into my eyes.

I heard a bang in the other room. The white kid was there, and he had knocked something over. Behind me, was my parents. Both of them were dead. I could see writing net to them that said “Viva Chavez.” whoever killed them, was from Venezuela.

I walked into the same room that the white kid was in. He had knocked my family’s safe on the ground. Using a crowbar, he grunted as he made an attempt at prying it open. My family would put money in here. Lots of it. We didn’t trust banks. We thought they would just get robbed and we would lose it. We were right though. By the time I turned eighteen, the bank that I had stored my money in had already been robbed three times. Just because I couldn’t afford to live in a high end neighborhood, just like it had been the rest of my life.

The white kid looked over at me. “Do you know the code?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then open this shit.”

James walked in holding fist fulls of jewelry and trying his hardest to stuff it in his pockets. I walked to the safe. 8-6-16. I cranked open the lock, and the safe opened. There was nothing. No money. They were bled dry. The safe was still three thousand pounds heavy. I felt inside. “What the shit?” it felt like we all thought.

We ran. The cops were almost definitely called. I knew what had happened, but I still didn’t want to be questioned or anything. I wanted to go.

All five of us had been tied down. Me, my mom, my dad, the white kid, and James.

We were in a circle, and there was a man who looked brown in the middle of us. He was holding a colt 1911 pistol in one hand, and a cigar in the other. He cocked his gun, shot my mother in the head. Made my father look, and then shot him as well. He picked up a phone, called 911, and left.

We went to a pawn shop across the street, and got rid of all the jewelry. We had money we had never touched before. Even though we left our finger prints, they would suspect mine, and I had touched the most stuff.

The airport was the next stop. I bought three tickets for Albuquerque, New Mexico. The plane would leave tomorrow. With the 20 dollars we had left, we slept on a park bench after we got drunk off a bottle of vodka. The white kid stop smoking crack the day after his mom died. Tallahassee kept us warm that night outside. The next day, I woke up feeling disorientated. My friends had slept with me all on one bench, and a cop had poked me with his baton to make sure I was alive. “Hey, wake up. Come on. Get the fuck up.”

I stood up and nudged James and the white kid to wake up.

“Why were you kids sleeping here last night.”

“We’re just tourists. Today is our flight back to Albuquerque. We figured we could just sleep outside, so we didn’t get a room.”

He believed me. “Whatever, just get out of here.”

All three of us walked over to the nearest gas station and “bought” coffee.

By bought I mean we stole.

We were all awake. We walked outside, and around the back of the building, I knew of a shortcut that could get us to the airport, and we could just wait there after we got through security. It was like, 9:30 am, and the flight was at 9 pm. Just get over there. It would be fine…

Someone saw us in the alleyway. I didn’t see them. They clubbed us in the back of the head, and we were all out cold, as far as I could tell. I heard somebody whisper “wake up.” in a girly voice.

Then I woke up.

I was in a wrecked car, flipped upside down. The girly voice was now next to me, screaming for me to wake up. I stared at her face, a cut on the forehead. A bruise on her cheek. Her name was Carletta. She owned the motel we stayed at. She was only 25 when her father died, leaving the motel in her name, and she was set for life. She was soon to give us her apartment in exchange for $500, and us having to pay the lease. She felt bad for us. Three people in a  new city, with nobody we know, not going to school. Not having a job set up.