rewrite:blood:ch2

Chapter 2

I was stupefied. James’ hands were shaking. I noticed what he had done. What I hadn’t noticed what the crumpled up hundred dollar bills in his other hand. He set down the money, and the knife, on the table in front of him, as I ran into the other room, just to find one person sitting in front of the static T.V. As I walked forward toward the man, I could tell that there was something off about him, just something small at first. He has a slight crook in his neck. As I inched closer, I saw a glimmer of a different color, speckled on his black skin. He was dead.

I felt this sinking feeling in my chest, like somehow the dead man in front of me was my own victim, and I just didn’t know it.

I dashed back into the kitchen. James had rinsed off his hand and was sitting in a chair next to the white kid with his hands resting on his head. While he was rocking back and forth in his chair, I had a little time to think. Like, was James actually even mentally stable. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I like to imagine that he was thinking the exact same thing that I was.

“W-what do we do now?” James said after about thirty seconds of him looking like he was going to cry.

“I guess we run,” said the white kid, “we’ve got to get a price on our heads after this shit.”

I opened the emergency exit door next to me, and asked James “did you get his gun?”

He held it in the air, after pulling it out from the back of his pants.

“And his cash,” I said “was that all of it?”

“Y-yeah,” he said, quickly and quietly.

“Then let’s get the shit out of here.”

I think that by this point the white kid was too strung out, he couldn’t understand what we were saying.

I stepped out into the warm florida night, thinking about what would be the best course of action. I thought about leaving the state, leaving the country, but then I remembered that the people in there have no recollection of what they saw the next day. And deaths are pretty common. We could say that we were stuck up. Yeah, these two corrupt cops came in and…

I heard a door open to my right. Another one of our bosses came out, and he was counting cash. Before I could say “oh shit” James had shot him three times in the chest.

There was two things that could have happen. Either I sat there, yelling at james, or I grabbed his gun and wallet and we booked it.

We did the latter.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” James repeated, running as fast as he possibly could. He looked behind him every time he said it too. Just imagine the picture. A black man shot another black man, the black man, of which, was in the same gang as him. Then he ran across the street under a bridge with a mexican, and a white kid.

Under the bridge, we stopped and the white kid was looking at the scene behind us. I sat down James and took his gun. I had never shot anybody. James had never shot anybody. The white kid had never been in a situation where his huge ass mouth had gotten two people killed.

Too many people were dead for us to go back. James was going to throw up, if I didn’t say something. “Look at me,” I said, as James was staring at the ground. He veered his head toward me, and I said “we’ll make it out of this.”

For some weird reason, he thought I was gay for him because of this, and tried to kiss me. I pushed him away as the white kid said they found the body. It was time to run again.

We were sprinting faster than last time, because we were sure that we were in deep shit. Then something really, really bad happened. The white kid tripped. Then the truck they were riding in turned the corner. The white kid was probably going to die. He was high, had face planted into the ground, and, through his best efforts, James pulled him up out of the road. They made it to the sidewalk, and we ran over to a bike trail next to a ditch.

My chest was burning with the thought of death. These guys didn’t even know that we were in their gang, so they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot us. They wrecked into a blue painted rod of concrete sticking out of the ground in front of the trail. I saw a couple people in the back get knocked around because of this, one of them actually fell out the side. We were running as fast as we could still, because if they had any sense, they would come out with guns blazing.

We went into some residential area, somewhere with lots of cover. I could hear gunshots behind me. Adrenaline pumping, these three college sophomores ran through an entire neighborhood before stopping in some random person's back yard. Whoever owned it had a garden and a small tree growing. We stopped and looked over the fence to see if, by some miracle, the gangsters chasing us had found where we were, yet again. They didn’t. We had some time to cool off.

“How are we going to get out of this shit?” said the white kid, “what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

I guess as the sort of leader of this group, I could say most anything I want, and nobody would question me. I acted all high and mighty, when, in all actuality, I was freaking the shit out. These two people were depending on me to make them feel safe, like they were protected if they were around me.

“I guess we try and get some shit from them,” I blurted out. “We’ve got guns, and we’ve got cash. Maybe get more ammo, and try and kill some of the mother fuckers.”

I sounded badass. Like I had done this before. This got my adrenaline pumping again. It was too dark for us to do anything, and they knew where we lived. I was scared. I was probably going to die.

That was, of course, until the white kid sobered up.

“Hey, we can stay at my mom’s house.”

“What?”

“She lives by here.”

“Why didn’t you say that before”

“I don’t know, I was high. What do you want me to say?”

“Where she lives would be a good start.”

“Just around the corner.”

“Okay, let's go.”

This was perfect. The easiest solution out of our problem. We all hopped back over the fence and started walking. James was constantly staring behind us. He was paranoid. I don’t think that the white kid was fully understanding the situation. He just kept looking down the street at his mom’s house.

“Should we call ahead?” I blurted out, after realizing that she might not want us to be showing up at her house in the middle of the night.

“She said I could visit any time.” he replied, leaving me confused. “Last time I checked 10:30 was a time.”

Not too long later, we arrived at her house. It was raggedy, like she was too old to take care of it. Paint was peeling off her windowsill, and the yard was full of dead, tall grass. The white kid just walked up the pathway. Her porch light was still on. He knocked three times, and thirty seconds later, a 55-ish looking woman opened the door.

“Hi Jamie,” so I guess that was his name, “you look quite tired tonight.”

Yeah, I thought more like the last three months.

“Well, my landlord was angry about rent again, and he said I had to move out,” I guess he was used to lying to his mom, “can me and my friends stay tonight?”

“Of course, I guess it’s better than being out on the street.”

We all walked inside. Despite the 80 degree weather outside, she had the heater on full blast. James was sweating in seconds.

I think it was pretty obvious that we were going to be lying through our teeth. She sat down on a loveseat across from the matching couch, which we sat on. At this moment, I got a better look at her. She had a few grey hairs that fell in front of her face. Other than that, her hair was a pure, deep brown. When she stood up, you could hear a clicking in her hip. She loved denim, which was obvious because she had a denim couch, pants, shirt, vest, even curtains. She didn't seem uneasy about us coming over.

To be honest, I expected her to be older.

When she sat down, she was quick to speak. “So, what happened this time?”

“We joined a gang,” said the white kid, showing us that he wasn't afraid of her, or that she was used to his shit, “and this mother fucker right here killed one of the leaders.”

“Okay, let me get some beers, and tell me from the beginning.”

She stood up and walked to the fridge in the other room. Me and James exchanged looks that said what the shit is going on.

As she sat back down holding a twelve pack of dos equis, the white kid seemed all too reluctant to spill his guts.

He told her about the stealing from the subway, running out of money, everything. She just sat there, waiting for him to finish. Once he finished, she took a long drag out of her cigarette-now I know where he got it from- blew all the smoke in our faces, and said “idiots. You're all idiots. You do realise that they have no idea who killed those people right?”

I felt stupid. Like I should have known. But I felt like there was no going back. I took a step back in my mind. Just think about movies and tv shows that this kind of shit happens. They always find out you did it, and they kill you. I know those are fake, but I also thought that initiations for gangs wouldn't be a fucking job interview. I was freaking out from all the shit that happened that night, and told her “we can’t go back.”

“Why,” she said, “why not? Did you hear what I just fucking said”--the f-bomb, so she was comfortable saying that-- “are you fucking deaf, they don't know it was you, they probably thought it was some other asshole.”

“Because they will find out,” I yelled, louder than I had intended to, “and they are going to fucking kill us.”

I had a mix of worry and anger on my face, something that had started just after she said fuck. I felt pissed, but she must have just thought I was scared, because she let her own expression change. All the way from angry and yelling fuck at a college kid, to little old lady that nobody yells at and gives people food when they come over. Almost like a grandma.

“I’m sorry,” I forced myself to say, just so I didn't feel as bad. I had regret and remorse for yelling in someone else's house, and I could hear my mexican mom in the back of my mind, winding herself up and getting ready to scream at me when we got home. My white ass daddy would just sit in the corner drinking beer and agreeing with everything my mom would yell at me. “I-I just don't want to die.” For the first time in about 7 years, I felt tears rising at my throat.

We spent the rest of the night in her living room, all of us, just trying to find a way to get out of the situation we had put ourselves in. We couldn't find any. By that point, we were fucked. James was anxious as shit, I was shit out of luck, and it was a shitty situation. Triple shit.

“What can we even fucking do,” was what James kept repeating, “I think we’re fucked.”

“Why,” I said, sternly, every single fucking time. Not as a question to him. More like a demonstration of my disappointment in what shit he was doing. He sounded like an asshole. Like he wanted us not to win. Not to get through.

That night, we all slept, sitting next to each other on the couch, leaning on the white kid, as he was snoring louder than the refrigerator in the next room, or the Jimi Hendrix that the white kid’s mom insisted on keeping on the whole fucking time we were there. Every time I asked to turn it off, which was a lot the entire night, she would call me racist, and then I would go back to bed.

The white kid has sores on his shoulders when he woke up. We were sweating any moisture out of our bodies, because the white kid’s mom kept the fucking heater on. When I woke up, along with James, the first thing we heard was the white kid saying we were gay for sleeping on him. He was frantic around the room for a few minutes, then he calmed down when his mom walked in and started screaming. “What the shit. Why are you screaming? What do you care?”-and many more questions followed as she walked in. I seriously  think that the white kid’s family is incapable of looking like they give a shit. I’m serious, the mom said this with a straight face, almost like she was passed out or playing poker or some shit.

We got up and she started cooking breakfast. One of the most nutritious breakfasts ever. Fucking eggs.

We got 4 eggs each. Four Fucking Eggs. nothing else. No vitamins. No orange juice. I wouldn’t be surprised if her whole fridge was full of eggs.

She wasn’t the healthiest person, and we all ate all of our eggs before she walked back in the room, but I swear to god I saw the white kid take two off james plate, but he was like really sneaky and ate them right away. What the shit.

So we were all sitting in the kitchen, which wasn’t all that far away from the front door, like maybe 20 feet. The white kid’s mom walks into the room and she was complaining about somebody leaving the toilet seat up. She walked in from upstairs, which I guess had a bathroom in it, and she walked right in front of the door. I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but the door is half wood, on the bottom half, and half glass on the top half, so you could see the people outside more easily with your 55 year old woman deteriorating eyesight. The light was shining in from behind her, and it looked like she was an angel. I don’t know if she really went to heaven though, but a truck with some guys in the back pulled up and shot the shit out of her. She didn’t even have time to scream. I watched in horror, as she walked out, and a bullet exploded the top part of her skull, through her chest, then once more through her neck, other than that, there was just a bunch of missed bullets.

The white kid was looking away the entire time--I guess smoking excessive amounts of crack slows your brain down--and he looked behind him to see his mom dead on the ground. He gave, a surprising response. Which was a mixture of disappointment and disgust.

By the time that he noticed the situation, I could hear the truck containing the people that shot her screeched down the road. Not the same one that was chasing me and the white kid and James though. A different model entirely. It wasn’t red either. It was black. Deep black.

Me and James exchanged looks. Looks of horror. Looks of shock. The white kid was sitting behind me, and he stood up, and slowly walked over to his mother, stood over her, and spat. Spat right on her fucking face.

“What the shit are you doing,” I said, assuming that he didn’t understand who was in front of him.

He looked up like a deer who got spooked. “She sold drugs,” he said with a straight face, “she sold drugs my whole life.”

James stood up and ran upstairs. He was going to steal her jewelry. I didn’t stop him. It seems like every time that somebody dies around us, we steal things that belong to them. So, I looked in her 50 square foot kitchen that I barely fit in. Starting next to the fridge, moving in a circular motion to the sink. She had three guns. Three fucking guns. She must really have sold drugs. James came back downstairs, walked up to me and told me he didn’t find anything. I guess that made sense. Then I walked over to the body. There wasn’t much blood on the floor. That was crazy though, because all the bullets went through her.  She had the same expression as her son. Disgusted. Not shocked. Not scared. Disgusted. Fucking disgusted.

We left out the back, into a small, cozy, and small town looking garden. To my right was a tomato plant, and to the left were some morning glories. The rest of the garden was filled with only these two plants. We followed a gravel path. It was like we had stepped into a story book. The next thing I knew, James was saying some random shit. “Dude, wake up,” he said, with an expressionless face.

“What?”

“Hurry up, we got to get out of here.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about.”

Next thing I knew, the white kid was saying some weird shit too. “Is he up yet? We’ve got like thirty seconds, max.”

“He won’t get up,” said James, still having a straight face that seemed like he was a robot.

“Well then we’ve got to leave him.”

“We can’t do that.”

“We have to, or else we’ll die.”

“Okay,” said James now looking like he did when he killed one of the leaders. “I’m sorry, man.”

Then I got up.