rewrite:the woods-ch 2

Chapter 2

There was nobody in the room, but I could hear people talking outside. I was mostly sure that I was inside a back room at that bar, but I didn’t totally know.

Eventually, I noticed the handcuffs on me that held my hands behind my back. When I struggled, they seemed to hurt more.

The people on the other side of the door stopped talking once they heard a few knocks on the door. One drew a gun, and cocked it. The other asked “you expecting someone.”

They weren’t.

The interesting thing about the situation I was in was that the people on the other side of the door didn’t even sound hostile. They just seemed like normal people. I don’t want to have to hear a couple normal people get shot.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t hear them get shot. I’m just saying I didn’t want to.

The man who cocked his gun walked over to the door slowly, and as he reached for the handle, it flung open, hurting him. The other man noticed the breach, and pulled the gun from the back of his pants. The man from the door shot him. The man who got hit by the door was shot shortly after, and was left defenseless due to him being crushed up against a door. I could hear him walking toward the room I was in. I realized he might be trying to kill me. When the door opened, it was that guy who gave me the free drinks.

“Oh man, am I glad to see you, man.”

He walked over to knock the handcuffs off me. “How the hell did you get here?”

“Man, I don’t know. I just woke up after drinking at your place man, and then you came in here.”

“Well we need to get you out of here.”

“What about those guys, man?”

“Doesn’t matter. Natural selection.”

The room outside of the one I was in had the same purple tint as the club I was in before. There were 80’s records everywhere. I could see the men bleeding out on the ground. Neither of them were dead yet. They were just shaking around freaking out. When we left the room, we left straight out the emergency exit. The alleyway was full of trash and used condoms. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure to look at. This guy seemed to know exactly where to go. I didn’t know where I was. I followed him for what seemed like forever. He kept looking around like he was crazy or something. I was getting more and more scared. The night seemed to eat me alive

When we finally stopped, we were sitting in the ditch I usually sleep in. he finally let me stop. I caught my breath. “What happened, man.”

“These guys are from my old neighborhood. They want money. Whatever they say to you, don’t believe them. I don’t owe them shit.”

“Man, why am I involved, man.”

“They think you work for me.”

“Why the hell do they think that, man.”

“You told them when you got high a few days ago. Why don’t you remember this shit man?”

“I must have blacked out, man. This is a lot to comprehend.”

“Well, just try. We’ll make it through this. It’ll be fine.”

We walked around one sketchy neighborhood to the next. It was seeming that with each one, they were getting worse. I needed to get the fuck out of each one, but each time it would end up just leaving to another sketchy place. He finally stopped me and unlocked the door to a one story apartment building on the west side of Denver. It smelled like shit outside and inside that place.

The room was filled with guns. Literally. Filled with guns. I was thinking about everything that had happened instead of this, so it took me a second to realize what was going on. It was a lot of guns.

I don’t feel too cool around guns. Not anymore. Especially after all the shit I’ve been through. Seeing a gun isn’t exactly on the top 10 of things I would particularly like to do.

He handed me one, a small pistol. I don’t know about guns. I don’t know how they work, where to point them. I don’t know shit. “Hey man, I can’t take this.”

“Why not?”

“Man, I don’t know how to use that shit.”

“Well just point and shoot.”

“Okay man, but don’t blame me if you get a bullet in the leg, man.”

I was never the most mentally stable. Well, I was mentally stable way before the sixties. I always liked to volunteer my body to those experiments that they did for LSD. It was fun. We would drink that weird watery shit, and listen to a band while we looked at some trippy shit in front of us. You do that enough, it leaves a lasting effect on you.

I ran away with this group because of the LSD, I stole because of the LSD, I got fired from so many jobs because of the LSD, and now, at the age of 74, I’m homeless, helping a sleazy nightclub owner that I don’t know very well because of the LSD.

“Alright, these guys are relentless, and you just need to shoot first and ask questions later. If they’re holding a gun, shoot.”

“Okay man, I just hope I don’t die man.”

The men showed up quickly. Twenty of them were outside the door before you could say a word. He didn't talk. I guess he thought I was going to die or some shit. Or maybe he was going to die. Or both.

“Ferrero, we know you’re in there. Just come out and we’ll let you go.”

“Fuck you, man. You know that that deal going south wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do shit wrong.”

“You don’t get it Ferrero. We know that. You can Just come out. You ain’t in trouble anymore.”

“Hey, fuck you man.”

Ferrero shot three bullets from his cover next to the door of the apartment. I could hear them hit cars, break glass, and cause havoc for the people that were only about 30 feet away. Ferrero wasn’t slow to reloading, and put another clip into his gun with haste.

“Alright then,” was the last thing I heard the men on the other side of that wall get shot. They screamed. They yelled. I heard metal scratching and clanking together. Both me and Ferrero were untouched. He grinned at me.

“What was that, man?”

“Those were my guys.”

When we looked out the door, we saw the trucks shining lights in our eyes. They were waving in the dark night, and when I exhaled, I could see my breath in the beams. They seemed to fill me with a warm feeling.

One of them got down from the back of the truck closest to us. The man was about the same height as me, so I would estimate about 5’10”. He seemed pretty happy overall. He wore a leather jacket that had a hole on the left shoulder pad. You could see his white shirt under it. The white shirt read clearly on it “Natural selection: try it today!”

We all were breathing heavily in the car. The heater was getting hot, and all of us were as well. My toes slowly grew back feeling and I was getting happier. Both the jackets that I wore were beginning to get sweaty, which was not good, but I didn’t care. In the moment, I was unable to care. Whatever was happening was good. I didn’t care.

We stopped in front of a warehouse after what I assume was about ten minutes of time. We were just outside of the city. You could still see the lights in the air. A clock setting on the wall was reading 4:00 am. I was usually already passed out in a ditch by this time of night. It’s funny. When I was first starting LSD, my closest friends warned me that I would be sleeping in the ditches in the future if I kept on with it. They had this big old intervention. I could never get into that bullshit. I was going to do what I wanted, and I didn’t care what anybody said about it.

I was ungrateful to be outside again. The sweat on my jacket was making me cold as hell. I was walking slowly, as the snow in front of me was just about knee high. When we finally went into the warehouse, it was seemingly full of space heaters. The place was so warm, I knew I had to take my jacket off right when I walked in.

“Well, here, I’ll take that for you.” said Ferrero’s friend. He seemed nice, which seemed strange, considering I assumed he was behind the killings that I had just witnessed not ten minutes ago.

“Okay, man, but don’t get it all dirty, I just bought it today.”

“Don’t worry.”

He had one of his goons take me into the next room over, and I just plopped myself onto a chair that just seemed way too soft.

He left the room and it was silent. I had some time to think about what had happened since I had blacked out. I remembered dancing, drinking, and overall having fun. It reminded me of the old LSD tests that they did back in my twenties. We would listen to a band that would play live and dance around. It was always a lot of fun, because they had these cool little paintings where you could just stare at them all day, and it would keep changing.

I remember sex. This girl was bending over a white bed and it looked like she was having a great trip, because she was just loving my not that-big-cock. She was so fucking loud. That was another thing that I always thought about with those LSD tests.  There would always be these chicks who would be the breeders. They were high just like anybody else. And once one of your friends told you where they were, oh man, you would just be waiting around to get back in line to fuck. They didn’t care. They were getting high and having sex. Who would mind that.

I was interrupted when the door opened and another man sat down in the room. He offered his hand, and I took it. “Well, how have you been since this little debouchel?”

“Well, man, I ain’t as shaken up about it as you would think.”

“Really? Well, that’s good to hear. Usually, people aren’t too open to talking after something like that happens to them.”

The room looked mostly empty. It had a couple of signs that said “natural selection.” I don’t know why. They were intriguing to look at.

“Well, man, I guess i’m just too mellow to be freaking out about anything, man.”

“Well, that’s just fine and dandy.”

We got to talking, and he explained more about what was going on with this whole “warehouses” and “excessive murder” stuff. He was a really nice man. They let me sleep in that warehouse that night. It seemed like they had everything in there. Food. water. Beds. it was a bum’s paradise. The warehouse was full of people dressed in respectable clothing. It looked like it was the fucking 1800’s in that warehouse. I finally caught up with Ferrero.

“Hey man, this is a pretty nice place. You got, like, everything here, huh?”

“Hey, yeah, it’s pretty cool. You wanna see where you’ll sleep tonight.”

“Okay, dude.”

He led me to one of the only beds that wasn’t a bunk. It was a twin size, but I was grateful to have it. It has been years since I had had a bed to myself. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it. It was comfortable too. Most people would probably not find it all that comfortable, but I had been sleeping on concrete for years.