Blood & Gristle Read online

  The only reason either of them even considered quitting was because society deemed recreational drugs evil and vile, a destroyer of lives, as if life was something so sacred. As if their bodies were temples or special or attuned to some new age monk shit or whatever.

  They weren’t idiots (not completely).

  They understood that drugs could kill you.

  But then so could driving or going out to eat at a restaurant or walking down the street. The real danger lived in the inane policing and demonizing ignorance.

  “Teach your children the proper way to smoke crack!” That’s what Jimmy always said.

  Crackalot traded two bills worth of crack for the blow and half the weed. Jimmy kindly thanked him and bowed out to make that ever-important run. Bored, Crackalot decided to come along. He scored some angel dust earlier in the evening and was anxious to give it a whirl. Jimmy was always down for something new, but insisted they wait until after he handled his business.

  Crackalot pleaded otherwise. He wanted to get high, “Now, now, now!”

  Jimmy shrugged and consulted the Magic Eight Ball.

  “Why you always fucking with that thing?” Crack sneered.

  “It steers me in the right direction.” Jimmy shook the ball and turned it over.

  “Ask again later,” Crackalot aped the ball’s continual response.

  The reply swam to the surface and came clear. Ask again later.

  “It’s broken, Cochise. Maybe you need an Ouija board instead?”

  Jimmy flipped him off. “This thing has never steered me wrong.”

  “Or right. It’s all vague, tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear bullshit.”

  “Whatever.” Jimmy fished his crack pipe from his pocket and waved in front of Crack’s face. “A little pick me up? We’ll hit that dust after I check in with Murray.”

  Crackalot shrugged his shoulders and listened to reason. They held off on the PCP and smoked a rock instead.

  Tonight’s business was not of the usual variety. No lowly, begging addicts begging to suck your dick or trying to trade you a thirteen inch, black and white television for a hit. No, not tonight, tonight there wasn’t even much of a choice in the matter. Jimmy couldn’t just screw around and show up or not depending upon how he felt. He had to visit this particular customer at least twice a week, or else.

  George Murray, the North Side Savior, was a shifty as shit lawyer who got a charge from getting murderers and vicious motherfuckers free. Six months ago, Jimmy got popped selling coke and acid to a narc. He just turned eighteen and he was looking at some serious jail time. In a nutshell, he was fucked. Murray stepped in, took his case, turned it around, and nailed the pigs with an entrapment charge.

  Jimmy wondered why a hot shit lawyer bothered taking his case. The answer was simple: indentured servitude, free pot, free crack. He had to drop the prick a couple of eights and a few joints twice a week. Not once a month, not twice a month, not even once a week, but twice a freaking week! Go figure, here was this loaded, gold plated asshole sipping Remy Martin and smoking crack. It was kind of like eating the finest caviar and washing it down with a forty of malt liquor.

  No matter. It was none of Jimmy’s business and Murray was instrumental; the cops hadn’t touched him since.

  The lawyer always met him outside. He tried hard to remain inconspicuous around his family. The exchange was as brief as always, except this time Murray had a favor to ask. Wait; he had a favor to impose. A friend of his needed a couple of eights and he needed them by three AM sharp. One hour from now.

  “Sure thing,” Jimmy smiled, but when Murray disappeared into his mini-mansion, he spit on the sidewalk and cursed up a storm.

  “Fuck that!” Crackalot joined in.

  Fuck that indeed, but nothing could be done. Murray had Jimmy by the proverbial balls.

  Off then, floating across town, to an address sloppily scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Murray added a tiny postscript. It warned: “Don’t be late! 3:00 am or else!”

  Or else what you fat, bald, Jew bastard?!

  Or else jail.

  The two walked for a while until Crackalot put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. His face lit up like a Christmas tree. Jimmy eyed him dubiously. Each and every time Crackalot’s face glowed like that there was some sort of hell to pay.

  “We got dust, man!”

  Jimmy’s face brightened too. Might as well make the mandatory run interesting, he figured while he reached for his Magic Eight Ball. Crackalot glared at his quirky idiocy.

  The Magic Answer?

  What else?

  Ask Again Later.

  The city hissed electric, alive, teeming with reticence. Walls opened and closed, yawned and gaped, revealed their moist, dank insides. Streets wavered, leading the two of them into heart thrumming madness.

  They used each other for balance, maniacal crutches, laughing and crying simultaneously, their insides buzzing and humming and throbbing violently.

  They ran at fences full speed. Crashing into them they rolled away bloodied and hysterical.

  They lifted cars over their heads.

  They were Roman and Greek and Hindu Gods.

  They were Destroyers.

  They entered a 7-Eleven and beat the clerk within an inch of his life.

  He lay clutching his side, breath hitching, whimpering, begging for mercy in his mother tongue.

  Jimmy, bored to tears with the violence gave the clerk a final kick and then made himself a cherry and Coca-Cola Slurpee. Crackalot kept on. He made a game of it and tried to kick the clerk square in his balls. The clerk crunched into the fetal position, blocked, and cried.

  Crackalot gave up and started scratching a losing lotto ticket after a losing lotto ticket. “If I don’t win with just one of these goddamn motherfucking, asshole, bitch tickets I am tearing his head from his fucking shoulders.” He gestured toward the clerk and widened his eyes menacingly.

  Jimmy laughed through a mouthful of red, sticky ice.

  The clerk wailed quietly.

  Crackalot continued, “I better win you fucking fuck, I better wi–” His voice cut out.

  Both Jimmy and the clerk looked at him expectantly. Crackalot began jumping about and gesticulating wildly. He humped the air and knocked over a spinning rack of budget CDs near the counter.

  “I guess he won.” Jimmy said to the clerk and then joined his chum in a victory dance.

  Danced out, they set upon demolishing the store. Glass shattered, metal bent, plastic cracked and the world rained sticky, sluicing fluids. By rampage’s end success was theirs. The store all but collapsed in a groan.

  Officer Allen was first on the scene. He jumped from his cruiser and ran toward the imploding store. A hot dog steamer tumbled end over end, shattered the storefront, and pinned him down. Jimmy and Crackalot, faces twisted, war cries raging, came howling through the jagged window frame. Somehow, someway, Allen recovered from the crushing steamer unit and got a hand around one of Jimmy’s ankles.

  His grip locked like a vice. Jimmy wrenched downward and tried to shake his leg free, but the PCP threw off his coordination. It felt like he was kicking through impenetrable sludge. The fight in him died and the drug froze his blood. He was finished. Done. Finito. A soon-to-be inmate.

  Not even Murray’s legal power could save him here.

  But Crackalot, ever vigilante, refused to abandon his friend. He ran back, screamed at the top of his lungs, and kicked the pig in his straining face. Blood sprouted from the cop’s nose in a high-pressure torrent. He let go of Jimmy and grabbed at his face to tend to his wounds.

  The two ran and ran until collapse burned in their chests.

  Destructive impulse gave way to soft, blue calm and the world slowed to the rhythms of their erratically firing neurons. Jimmy and Crackalot buckled in a dark park. They lay watching the stars weave and dance above. Inside, color bursts and soothing tendrils of enlightenment blossomed.

  Recognize – here was the beauty that only drug add
led brains could spill.

  Recognize – here was the quiet so perfect it neared bliss.

  Recognize – here was the quiet that tickled and turned, that achieved fine point attunement, that blossomed until the mind, body, and soul operated in golden synchronicity.

  Revelation spiraled high in Jimmy’s amping mind, a black hearted sun that illuminated everything, nothing, and then, upon the apex of false insight, died and left Jimmy burning with loathsome self-effacement.

  Gone were the angels of light, in stormed those ineffectual dreams.

  Life as dead weight.

  Life as a chore.

  A never ending struggle.

  He was: lostloserburnoutgreedyselfishfuckupusercorrupterruinerblackheartpit.

  He was: brokenminddrugaddledhatemongernofuturenodirectionnofuturenohope.

  But he was loyal.

  Right?

  Strong?

  Right?

  Courageous?

  Right?

  If anything, he was true to those who were true to him, down for those who were down for him.

  Right?

  Serena, for instance, the trifling bitch would stab him in the back without even batting an eyelash, so then, given the opportunity, he’d fuck her, and rip her off, and fuck her again, a thousand times over.

  Take that Esteem. Take that Will.

  Jimmy Segona wasn’t ALL bad.

  Crackalot broke that pig’s nose for him and in return he was ready to protect his friend at all costs. Jimmy would never forget it and he would pay out in spades when the time was right.

  That was noble wasn’t it?

  That was what really mattered wasn’t it?

  Add up all the ill shit and the only thing that really mattered was your character and its capacity for nobility.

  Right?

  The subject of loyalty kicked him in the ass and reminded Jimmy that he had one more run to make. He checked his cell. Three-thirty-three a.m. Murray was going to be pissed. Jimmy sought the Eight Ball’s wisdom.

  Ask Again Later.

  Whatever.

  Better late than never.

  And shit, free drugs got there when they got there, right?

  Murray’s friend lived on the Upper East Side. Cutting through alleys and across a few backyards, the walk took just over a half an hour. Crackalot complained the whole time. The dust was messing with him and he wanted to go home, smoke some weed, and try to come down.

  “I gotta get my mind right, man!” He groaned. He rubbed his face and then knocked on his head for emphasis.

  “So go home!” Jimmy huffed.

  Crackalot looked around and then shook his head no. “I can’t… I’m scared.” He gave Jimmy a pair of helpless eyes.

  “Scared?” Jimmy snorted. “Ha! You little bitch.”

  “Come on, man!” Crack cut him off. “This shit is intense!” He looked around nervously, like the world was poised to attack.

  Jimmy shrugged and kept on. Crack zipped it and followed along.

  When they got to the residence, the gargantuan house was completely dark. They crept up through the black entryway and Jimmy rang the bell. They waited in silence, awed by the majestic archway and fifteen foot mahogany doors.

  “If I had a place like this…” Crackalot marveled at the architecture. “I wouldn’t need no fucking crack, you know?”

  “Right?” Jimmy nodded then blurted, “Goddamn castle!” He shook his head and rang the bell again.

  Nothing.

  “Let’s jet, man!” Crackalot’s impatience cracked his voice.

  “Hang on. Murray will kill me if I don’t follow through.” Jimmy rang the bell five more times and then pounded on the solid doors with a heavy fist.

  Still nothing.

  He leaned in and put his ear to the wood.

  A faint, incalculable clicking, clicked from somewhere within the house. “What is that?” Jimmy looked at Crackalot and raised his eyebrows and pushed his whole face against the door. The clicking sounded off like a ticking clock, but harsher, stronger, louder, like a pair of thick, metal gears catching one another and then slipping.

  Crackalot watched Jimmy for a second and then pushed him aside, hunched over, and put his ear to the door. Jimmy gave him a little room and went for his Magic Eight Ball.

  “Leave that fucking thing alone, you fool!” Crackalot sneered. Unimpressed with the clicking, he straightened and hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  He turned to leave just as the massive doors audibly unlatched and slowly began to squeak inward. Giant hinges creaked and broke Jimmy from his soothsaying. He took a step forward, his feet upon the lip of the threshold, his hand on the door jamb, and leaned in a bit. He tried to get a look inside, but beyond the faint slash of light carving out a hunk of polished, expensive wood flooring, there was only darkness and that odd clicking – louder and weirder and (in Jimmy’s opinion) scarier without the thick wooden doors’ muffling. Jimmy leaned in a little more.

  “Hello? Delive–”

  Something silver, something metallic and cylindrical and tendril-like, a giant flagella, an overgrown antennae, a segmented whip, shot forth from the darkened depths and zipped through the black like a fast striking snake. Its serpentine figure grazed Jimmy just above his left eye, opening a wide, gushing wound near his eyebrow.

  As fast as it came, the silver flash retracted. On its way back into the house it angled closer and sliced the white of his left eyeball.

  Stars exploded at the base of his skull.

  Jimmy fell against the door jamb and brought his hands up to cradle his wounds. In doing so, he accidentally hit himself in the head with the Eight Ball. The hard, black plastic smacked the bridge of his nose – a spike of white, hot fire flared, but it was a nothing pain compared to the searing burn ramping in his left eye socket. On pure instinct, he tucked the ball in to its case and then brought his free hand back up to shield his damaged eye.

  Crackalot watched the horror unfold slack jawed. When he finally snapped to, he immediately lunged forward and pushed Jimmy clear of the doorway.

  The clicking sound clacked harder and the silver whip thing shot from the darkness yet again. This time it did more than scratch, it wormed fast and hard and impaled Crackalot’s left shoulder. The skinny whip drove through bone and muscle and flesh, plowing through soft biology, crushing through the tough stuff, pulverizing nerves until it exploded out of Crack’s back in a meaty shower of red and pink.

  The whip thing held, three feet of it sticking out of Crackalot’s ruined shoulder, the rest of it, an indiscernible length, disappearing into the depths of the pitch black house. The clicking ceased. Time slowed. Blood dripped from the whip’s silvery, reflective surface, pattering the entryway walk with a mini-flood of blood and gristle.

  Crackalot, slo-mo, each motion stretched to its spatial breaking point, turned his head and stared at his impaled shoulder in frozen fright.

  Jimmy, slo-mo, as if underwater, craned his neck and stared at Crackalot staring at his shoulder in frozen fright.

  The entire night seemed to crinkle and crack in frozen fright

  Little, inch tall, metallic hooks sprouted the entire diameter of the cylinder. The whip’s reflective surface waved and blood spattered.

  The clicking kicked back in.

  Time caught up with itself and then everything that seemed to move in slow motion did just the opposite. Everything moved too fast.

  The silver thing began to retract, its hooks digging into Crackalot’s skin and pulling him along with it. He fought and screamed and tried like mad to free himself, yanking his shoulder backward, bucking, panicking, but with each pull the vicious little hooks dug themselves in deeper and deeper, with each pull an ocean of blood exploded from his punctured shoulder and a helpless scream tore its way though his throat.

  Jimmy crouched to the right of the door. He pressed his left palm to his left eye socket, putting pressure on the ruined eyeball bene
ath. Crackalot screamed and screamed and Jimmy kept meaning to jump in to help, he kept meaning to react, but pain and time and stress and pressure collided within and tripped him up. Instead of doing, he envisioned himself grabbing his friend and yanking with all of his might. He envisioned the metal whip thing ripping Crack’s shoulder to shreds and he envisioned the Crack would probably never use his left arm again, but then a ruined shoulder was better than meeting whatever powered the clicking, pulling death spear head on.

  Go, Jimmy chided internally, Move, but he was stuck, frozen with fear.

  Terror tightened in his chest and clogged his throat.

  He stood by helplessly and watched as the terror in Crackalot’s eyes intensified. Time slowed again. Space folded in on itself. Here was his chance. All he had to do was lunge. All he had to do was lunge and grab and pull and then run.

  But still, Jimmy stared.

  He watched as Crackalot’s eyes found his and then begged and pleaded for help.

  And still, Jimmy stared.

  He heard his only friend scream bloody, fucking murder. He heard the continual clicking. He heard the tearing of flesh, the cracking of bone, the shredding of muscle.

  And still, Jimmy stared.

  He could smell the copper scented blood misting as oceans of it ran freely from Crackalot’s destroyed shoulder.

  And still, Jimmy stared.

  He could taste the fear. He could taste the cowardice.

  And still, Jimmy stared.

  He could do all of these things, see, hear, feel, smell, but he couldn’t move a muscle or budge a hair until Crackalot’s screaming diminished to a faraway echo somewhere deep within the darkness, and then suddenly, he could do nothing but move, suddenly he ran like light, like air, like wind, like fear, suddenly, he ran and ran and ran until he could run no more and then he hid and hoped and prayed and began the ugly process of coming to terms with who he really was.

  Turning the spherical oracle over in his palms, Jimmy gave it one shake (Will I live?), two (Will I live?), and then kept his good eye trained on the foggy window beset into the ball’s belly. His bad eye stung, involuntarily squinting and expelling a rash of smelly fluids. The die bobbed, and bobbed, and then an answer came clear.