I thought he might have given me the nine to smoke the tourists who had started poking at me and posing for pictures with my corpse, but I couldn’t move. I heard one of the revelers say something that chilled me.
I tried to speak to them, to tell them that I was innocent, but I was paralyzed.
I screamed out loud, but the sound never left my lips. I was suddenly being pulled out of myself. The earth literally dropped out from under me leaving me floating weightless a million miles in space. I could see heaven from where I was, but as I turned to it the pearly gates slammed shut. There was a sign on the door that said “No dogs or niggers allowed.”
The top of the gate was covered with razor-wire and had shards of broken glass cemented into the surrounding walls. I didn’t care. I charged the gates and began pounding on them until my fists bled from where they had been punctured and lacerated by the jagged glass. Slowly the gates opened and all these Brooks Brothers suits wearing white boys came spilling out carrying shotguns. Their faces all looked like Scratch. There were police officers with them dressed in riot gear, they grinned at me with teeth plated with gold.
“Can’t you read the sign, boy? Go home. We don’t want your kind around here.”
“I’m dead. Where am I supposed to go?”
“Go to hell, nigger!”
They all started laughing at me. I started firing my nine even as the first shotgun blast blew open my chest leaving a ragged steaming hole. I didn’t feel a thing except my rage. Even in the afterlife I was getting fucked over. I was going to get in there no matter how many of these motherfuckers I had to kill. I wondered how long I could hold out with my lungs and heart obliterated by shotgun slugs. I tried not to think about it. I just kept shooting, aiming right for the head and watching as they popped like balloons and sprayed blood and brains across the pearly gates.
My aim was uncannily accurate. Each shot caught one of the suits flush in the forehead. But there were too many of them. They started to overwhelm me. I was taking so many hits that my body was coming apart. I heard a familiar sound coming from behind the gates, the stuttering staccato of automatic weapons fire. The suits began flying to shreds as bullets raked through them. Behind them I could see Tank with that big AK in his hands covering my ass as usual. He laid waste to the entire heavenly host and then turned a forty oz. up to his lips and winked at me. He walked over and passed the forty to me. I lifted it to my lips without bothering to wipe his spittle from its rim. We were brothers. Tank started to head back toward the gates while jamming another banana clip into the AK. He stopped and waved for me to follow.
“Come on, dog. We got to finish this.”
I ejected the spent clip from the Beretta and popped in a fresh one as we passed through the gates into heaven.
When Huey and I finally awoke the darkness was absolute. I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. Lights from the road helped us find our direction as we strained our eyes and made our way, mostly by memory, back to the car. It was past midnight when I dropped Huey off at his house.
“Yo, dog, you welcome to crash here if you want.”
“I just live around the corner, bro. I’m cool. Do you need me to stay?”
“You’ve helped a brother out enough today. Thanks for getting’ me out of that whack-ass funeral.”
“Yeah, is your Mom gonna be cool with that though?”
“She’ll understand.”
“My Mom won’t.”
“You can still stay here if you need to, dog. My door is always open.”
“Naw, brother. I’d better get my black ass on home.”
“See you tomorrow then, Snap.”
“Later, dog.”
I didn’t tell Huey about the dream or premonition or visitation or whatever it was I’d had. As I drove through the deserted streets, the image of Tank up in heaven still puttin’ in work and covering my ass soothed my mind a little. I pulled up to the twenty-four hour convenience store on Washington Lane and Germantown Ave and called Christina from my cell phone while I filled up my tank.
“Hello?”
She picked up on the first ring and her voice was bubbly and expectant.
“Yeah, it’s Malik. I’m coming over.”
“I thought you was gonna stand me up again. It’s damned near one o’clock in the morning.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m on my way now, unless you don’t want me to come now?”
“Just get here and I’ll make sure you cum.”
I jumped in the Impala and flew down Wayne Avenue. I slowed the big Chevy to a crawl as I made the sharp turn onto Lincoln Drive and then floored it again as I exited Lincoln Drive onto Kelly Drive. I inhaled the sweet smell of pine trees as I sailed pass Wissahickon Park remembering when my mother and I used to go down there to swim in the creek, catch crayfish and salamanders, and hike through the woods. I missed my mother. I missed that close relationship we once had. The only way to get it back was to extricate myself from the evil shit I was involved in.
The smell of the trees and the cool breeze coming off the river helped raise my spirits as I headed down Kelly Drive and onto the Parkway. By the time I made it to Christina’s house I wasn’t thinking about anything but sex.
“Damn, that was quick. It seems like I just hung up the phone.”
“Don’t worry. Getting here is the last quick thing that’s gonna happen tonight.”
My boys would have been ashamed of me that night. That white pussy turned me out like a trick. I acted like some lovestruck punk instead of the bonafide playa that I am, but that was the best pussy I’d ever had. Even though I had swore to myself that I would never do it to any woman except the woman I married, I went down and licked Christina’s sweet pussy like it was a coke spoon. Her tremendous breasts heaved as her breath caught in her throat and her hips ground against my face, her pelvis thrusting up to meet my eager tongue. Her body moved like electricity was coursing through her. I felt like a sucker, but I was enthralled by her. I had never seen a woman so beautiful outside of a movie. After her own orgasm tore through her making her buck like a wild stallion, she threw herself on me like a wolf lunging for the throat of a deer.
She made love to my dick with her mouth like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She was adoring of it, lavishing her affection upon my manhood as if it were an object of worship. When I came she lapped up every drop of my seed, gobbling it up like it was her only source of nourishment.
I fucked her in every orifice and she seemed to enjoy every position equally. She came with me in her ass as easily as she did with me in her vagina and even seemed on the verge of climax while giving head. There wasn’t a moment during the course of the night when she wasn’t stimulating me in some capacity. If I withdrew from her vagina she guided me straight into her mouth. If she took me out of her mouth she jacked me off between her luscious breasts. If they came out from between her breast she would guide me into her ass. On and on it went until we had more than half a dozen orgasms between us.
I roared like a lion when I came and she screamed like a murder victim and burst into tears. It was the most passionate sex I had ever had. When it was over I had the strongest urge to tell her I loved her. But my pride and my better sense kept me in check. I didn’t know shit about her no matter how well our bodies had communicated. Still, I felt something tender and powerful when I held her and it scared the shit out of me. Love at first sight was for punks and love at first fuck was for tricks. I needed to put as much distance as I could between me and Christina. I hopped out of bed and gathered up my clothes, dressing in a hurry and trying not to look at her flawless body. It was bad enough that I was working for a white boy without falling in love with some snowflake bitch too. I was pulling my Timberlands on my feet when she reached out and grabbed my arm.
“You have to leave?”
“I gots to get tha fuck out of here.”
Her eyes looked hurt. There was so much emotion in them that I felt something flutter in my heart. I turned
