The old man promptly complied, kicking up a trail of dust as he scurried up the basement steps.
The woman’s eyes were full of fear and almost looked innocent despite her addiction. But starring out from a face hardened by drug use, chapped and burnt lips, disheveled hair, sunken cheeks, reminded me that she was just another treacherous ho strung out on that shit. Still, in order to get burned by a crackwhore, you had to first be stupid enough to trust one and I couldn’t imagine Scratch being that stupid.
“This the bitch you said played you for your shit?” I asked, staring at the notorious drug kingpin like he was the world’s biggest fool.
“Yeah, bro, this the bitch.”
“You must’a been slippin’ majorly for some nasty-ass hooker like this to clown you.”
“Nigga, ain’t nobody clown shit here! The bitch slipped some shit out my ride while I was handlin’ some business with Yellow Dog.”
“Fool, you call me nigga again and they’s gonna find two bodies down here in the dirt. I don’t play no peckerwood usin’ that word around me no matter how down you supposed to be. Ain’t no cracker ever that down. Stupid ass shouldn’t have been holdin’ in your car no how. You supposed to be a playa you should know better.”
“You gettin’ a little too free with your tongue yourself, Snap. You forgettin’ who works for who.” Scratch walked up to me and stood with his chest swelled out against mine and his foul carrion breath steaming in my face. I put my hand out and softly but firmly shoved him back. He swatted at my hand but kept his distance.
“I ain’t forgot shit. You just watch who you callin’ nigga and it’s all good.”
Scratch glared at me like I was some poisonous insect that he was trying to decide whether or not to swat at the risk of being stung. My skin crawled and tendrils of ice slithered up my spine.
“You ain’t invincible, Snap, and you damn sure ain’t bulletproof. So you better watch how you speak to my white ass. I can have you bodied as easily as anyone else.”
“Now we both know that ain’t true and ain’t neither of us invincible so you watch yourself too, nigga!”
This time it was I who walked up to stand chest to chest with Scratch, bumping him backwards and rotating my face inches from his as I purposely spit out my words, spraying him with minuscule droplets of saliva. I had my hand on the trigger of my nine and I would have hollowed out his chest right then if he hadn’t plead to a lesser and backed down like a little bitch. His punk ass couldn’t draw down on somebody who was set to fire back. Either that or he just didn’t consider me worth the effort.
“See, Snap, that’s the difference between you and I. To me, you callin’ me nigga, that’s a compliment. I guess I’m just ignorant like that. Now cap this bitch and lets get the fuck up out of here!”
She looked like the ghost of Christmas past with her skeletal frame wrapped in designer clothes that were five or six years out of date. Her faded black, pinstriped, skintight, Gloria Vanderbilts gave testament to just how long she’d been tweakin’.
“I ain’t steal shit from this white boy! He just don’t want me to have this baby. He wants to kill my little boy!”
“What…this your kid, Scratch? You got a thing for crackwhores?”
“Shut the fuck up and pop this bitch!”
“I’m just fuckin’ with you, dog. Move the kid and I’ll do this hooker for you.”
“Naw, you pop ’em both.”
“Fuck dat shit! I ain’t doin’ no kid!” I started to turn and leave.
“Fine then, you pussy ass mutherfucker!”
Scratch reached over and snatched the child from the whore’s arms. She tried to hold on to her baby but Scratch drew back and pimp slapped her. The back of his hand collided with her jaw with the sound of a gunshot. Snot flew from her nose as her head whipped around damned near three-hundred and sixty degrees and her chapped lips split and ran with blood. She fell to the ground sending up a cloud of dust.
“Now, Nig-uh- I mean, Snap, cap this pipe smokin’ hooker!”
“No sweat, my man.” I pointed the gun at the woman’s head…
…And pumped three rounds into her skull, tearing it to pieces. The top of her head went first and then the left side of her face. She laid there with her left eye staring at me in the dark from across the room and her right eye closing slowly.
I stood in the darkness, stunned by my own cruelty. Scratch began to laugh. His huge flashlight was still trained on the woman’s brutalized corpse.
“Oooooh shit! That was vicious, dog!”
“Get that flashlight off her face, man! I don’t want to look at that shit!”
“Okay, but we got to get rid of this kid though. I know how you feel, but we can’t just leave him here. It’s a mercy killing now. Would you rather leave him down here with these fiends? Yo, I don’t believe this shit! I know you ain’t cryin’ over this little crack baby?”
But I was. I couldn’t believe it myself, but tears were streaming down my face. I was overcome with such a profound remorse that I was almost paralyzed by it. This killing raised my personal death toll to an even two dozen, but this was the first time I could recall feeling anything for the marks I took out.
“Give me the kid.”
“You gonna do him?”
“Just give me the muthafucka!” I barked and Scratch obliged.
“Forgive me,” I said, looking into the brown-skinned baby’s warm trusting eyes. The child’s eyes sucked me into them like a whirlpool, swallowing me whole and dragging me under. I drowned in them and died. I saw my whole life play out like pictures in a ViewMaster. It was all anger and pain, hatred for myself and others. I didn’t like anything I saw.
“Forgive me,” I begged as the tears continued to fall.
“Kill that little bastard!” Scratch bellowed. His flashlight was turned upwards to illuminate his face. His blue eyes narrowed into serpentine slits. His gold capped teeth looked like a mouthful of fangs and his white skin was the pale bloodless pallor of a corpse. In my heart, I knew that it was the face of Satan.
I looked down at the child in my arms and it all made sense. Scratch was Satan and I was the whore of Babylon, this child, my last hope for salvation, perhaps even everyone’s last hope. Maybe this was the reborn baby Christ, and if Christ died this time then the world would belong to Scratch, and drugs, and greed, and murder. The idea sounded absurd even as I thought it, but like the chimerical voices and hallucinations of a schizophrenic or chronic drug addict, telling myself that it was all an illusion did little to dispel it. The more I stared at the pallid fright mask that danced and raged, glowing in the darkness, the stronger the idea became. I decided not to wait for him to grow horns and a tail. I pointed the gun at Scratch and pulled the trigger.
The flashlight fell from his hands and spun off into the darkness casting shadows in every direction as he flew backwards crying out in pain. The flashlight hit the ground and continued to spin illuminating the basement in brief flashes like a strobelight. I watched as each flash of light revealed Scratch’s laborious rise from the ground clutching his bleeding chest. His muscles seemed to be reshaping, elongating and hypertrophying into something massive and powerful. Scratch’s jaw appeared to come unhinged and his gold teeth seemed to grow into long tusks. His hands curled into huge claws and his arms grew until they touched the ground even as his head touched the ceiling. Each turn of the flashlight revealed an even more horrible change. It could have been the adrenalin coursing through my veins, a trick of the light, my own guilt and fear feeding some sort of schizophrenic episode. But as far as I was concerned, Scratch had just turned into a demon before my very eyes. When Scratch charged toward me he did not look even remotely human. The roar that erupted from his throat was like the sound of an oncoming train.
“Snap!!!”
I took the stairs two at a time as I ran holding the tiny infant tight against me. Scratch’s voice boomed in the darkness below.
“You’re dead, motherfucker! You hear me, fool? I’m going to kill you and everyone you ever knew!”
I flew from the house, down the front steps, and flung open the door to my Impala with my heart beating against my chest as if it was trying to break free and run. I was hyperventilating, trying to suck oxygen into my cramped lungs as panic and shock crushed down on me threatening to stop my heart in my chest.
The child was still silent as I buckled him up as best I could and struggled to fit the keys into the ignition with
