The Pink Palace

by Marlon McCaulsky

  “Yeah, son. Then she got in the car with him, and they broke out and drove to the Days Inn.”

  “You saw this shit?”

  “Yeah, son, and your girl was all on his dick.”

  “A’ight . . . so she wanna get down like that? Cool, I’ll hit you back in a minute Horse. One.”

  “One.”

  I hang up my phone.

  It’s not the money I spent on her ass—that was chump change. Even her fucking some other random dude is annoying, but understandable; she’s a ho that strips. It’s the principle of it all. Nikki thinking she can play me like that and go around fucking with the one nigga I got beef with is blatantly disrespectful, forcing a nigga to deal with that bitch accordingly.

  “Fuck that ho,” I say as I drive to Yvonne’s house. I’m busy thinking of what I’m going to do to Nikki’s ass when I catch up with her. Would Mo’Nique have disrespected me like that if she were my bitch? Naw, fuck that, she’s just like her cousin. I’m gonna fuck her pretty ass as soon as I see her.

  As I’m driving to the spot, I see Yvonne in the alley with some nigga. I slow up, park down the street, and creep back to the alley. Yvonne’s begging for some dope from a young nigga that Corey got hustling for him. This bitch still hasn’t paid me back for the shit she and her man Curtis stole from me.

  “Please, just give me a little bit. I promise I’ll pay you tomorrow,” Yvonne says.

  “Bitch, get the fuck away from me!” the kid snaps back.

  “Come on, please?” she begs.

  “Get the fuck outta here.” This kid got potential, but then he gets soft on me.

  “Please . . . I’ll suck your dick,” Yvonne pleads.

  The kid stops and looks at her. “A’ight, that’s what’s up,” he says. I gotta admit that when I was his age, I also used to let bitches suck me off for a hit. He unzips his pants and pulls out his dick. Yvonne inhales it in her mouth. Yvonne is sucking him off real good, too. After 10 minutes, the kid pulls out and zips up.

  “Here.” He throws her a nickel bag and walks away.

  Yvonne snatches it up and sits right there, taking from her bag a spoon, a lighter, a candle, and a bottle of water. She holds the spoon over the f lame until the heroin melts, and then she dips the needle into the brown pool, slowly drawing the liquid until it fills the syringe. She taps it and then takes a belt out of her bag, wrapping it tight around her bicep. She finds the vein in her left arm that isn’t completely dried up. She then carefully injects the dope in her arm and lets the rush get her high. She sits on the ground and leans against the wall, letting a wave of bliss take her over.

  She’s a dope fiend to the core. Damn shame. I hear this bitch used to have a good job at a law firm in midtown. Had a nice little frame on her, too: round ass and big tits. Now she looks like a scarecrow. I’m never gonna get my money back from this bitch. She’s no better than Nikki’s ass. I’m gonna have to put her outta her misery.

  I head back to my car, pop the hood, and scrape some battery acid off, mixing it with some coke. Then I take a lighter out and cook it up in a cut-open soda can. I grab a hypodermic needle out of my glove compartment, draw up 50 CCs, and walk back to the alley.

  Yvonne’s still on cloud nine, high as a bitch. I walk up to her, and she looks up at me.

  “Damien . . . I got . . . some money for you . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that, ma. You don’t have to worry about that no more.”

  “I was gonna pay you back, Damien. It was Curtis’s idea to do it,” Yvonne says.

  “I know. That’s why I got something for you, because I know how loyal you are to me.” I bend down and give her the needle.

  “It’s on me.”

  “Damien, you’re too good to me. I swear I’m gonna get your money for you.”

  “I know, ma.”

  Yvonne finds the same vein and takes the lethal hit. At first she smiles, but the smile quickly turns into a look of fear as the dope begins to burn in her veins. Yvonne trembles profusely and foams from the mouth.

  I stare in her eyes and smile as the bitch goes into convulsions and falls over on the ground. Pretty soon, she stops fidgeting and lies still. I can’t help but think she got off easy compared to what I’m going to do to Nikki.

  11

  Worse Than Death

  NIKKI

  I end up staying the night with Dre in the hotel room. I enjoy being with him. I haven’t enjoyed just kickin’ it with a man in years. We stay up talking for the rest of the night about everything. I didn’t realize Dre and I like a lot of the same things. It’s weird . . . I almost forget that Dre’s a trick. I think we’re now on a different level than we were before.

  I go to The Pink Palace that night, and it’s thick as usual with the regular niggas that be in there. Penny’s on stage doing her thing.

  I’ve known Penny since the first day I started dancing. It’s not often you find another girl in this game that you can trust. We look out for each other at all times. That’s why we moved in together. Other than Mo’Nique, she’s the only girl I fuck with up in here. When she got pregnant, her baby daddy wanted nothing to do with her, so Mo and I took care of her like family. All of the other girls know how we get down. Any of them start shit with any one of us, they get the beat down.

  Penny’s dancing to “Wait (the Whisper Song).” I come out on stage and start dancing with her. We’re like the dynamic duo of stripping. We have a routine that makes it look like we’re having sex on stage. These tricks give up mad dough to see us do it. While we’re going through the motions, I start to feel sick. For some reason, my stomach’s turning and I feel dizzy. Penny immediately senses that something’s wrong with me.

  “Nikki, what’s wrong, girl?” Penny whispers to me.

  “I don’t know.... I’m just hot,” I say as I continue to dance. The next thing I know, I’m flat on my ass.

  “Nikki!” I hear Penny scream. One of the bouncers, Jon, picks me up and carries me backstage.

  “Nikki, are you all right? Somebody call 911!” Penny yells as she strokes my face.

  “I’m all right, Penny. What happened?”

  “You fell the fuck out. How do you feel?”

  “My stomach is upset.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “I just ate some fried chicken before I got here.”

  “You probably got a little food poisoning,” Penny says.

  “I’m fine, I just—” I feel a surge come up my throat, and I vomit on the floor.

  “Oh, shit! Oh, we gotta take you to the emergency room,” Penny says. The way I’m feeling, I’m not gonna argue with her.

  We go to Grady Memorial Hospital near the club. I’m in the ER lying on a bed. They draw some blood and run some tests on me. I feel better, but I want to know what happened to me. The doctor comes over to me.

  “Well, Nicole, it appears that you don’t have food poisoning,” the doctor says.

  “What? But I felt sick to my stomach.”

  “We got the results from your blood test back. You’re pregnant.”

  It’s like the world comes to a stop. I can’t be pregnant, not by Damien or Dre. “I’m pregnant?”

  “Yeah, I can give you some information. . . .” The doctor’s words go in one ear and out the other. Penny and I bounce up outta there and back to the house.

  “So, what are you gonna do?” Penny asks me.

  “I ain’t keeping it. I can’t have a baby. Not from Dre, and especially not from Damien.”

  “Are you sure you wanna do that?”

  “Penny, this ain’t like Mike, the nigga that knocked you up. At least he pays child support. Dre’s too immature and can’t take care of a baby, and I wouldn’t want any child with Damien as the father. I’m calling that abortion clinic in the morning and making an appointment.”

  “A’ight, girl, you know I got ya back. Are you gonna tell Mo?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give her a call.”

  I try to call Mo’N
ique, but keep on getting her voicemail. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to have this fucking baby. That’s the last thing I need to have now. Dre is still a little boy running the streets. Although he would love for me to have his baby, I can’t depend on him. Hell, he’s planning on going to war with Damien and getting his ass killed. Damien’s a trick to the third power. He already got a baby up north. I don’t wanna have any ties to him like that. If I plan on getting with King, I can’t have Damien’s baby. I can’t believe I let myself get so careless and let one of them mutherfuckas knock me up! Besides, I ain’t letting no baby mess up my body and give me stretch marks and shit.

  The next day, I go to the clinic and meet with a doctor who explains the procedure of the operation to me. Turns out I’m just two weeks pregnant, so it must be Damien’s. She’s talking to me as if this would be one of the hardest decisions in my life and that I might have some regrets. Shit, there ain’t nothing more I want than to get this damn baby outta me. I tell her that I don’t care how they do it, I just want to get this over and done with. I set a date for next week to have it done.

  I’m heading back home when I get a call from Damien. Great, this is the last nigga I want to talk to. I have to play it cool. I don’t want him to think that anything’s wrong. I answer my phone and talk to him.

  “Hey, baby, what’s up?”

  “Nothing, ma. I just wanted to know what you were doing,” Damien says.

  “Nothing right now. I’m just heading back to my house.”

  “Good. I was about to head over to your house.”

  Oh, that’s just great.

  “Good, I been missing you. I’ll see you there in a minute,” I lie.

  “A’ight, ma.” Damien hangs up.

  I’m not really in the mood to see Damien, especially after the morning I just had, but I have to suck it up and hustle this trick. When I get to my house, Damien is already there, waiting for me. Damn, he must really want some ass to be here already. I should tell him about Dre getting ready to come after him, but knowing Damien, he would go after him first. The more I think about it, if Dre did kill Damien, then that would free me up to go after King. I really like Dre, but King got that serious paper. I’ll just wait and see how things play themselves out.

  “Hey, baby,” I say to Damien as I kiss him.

  “Hey, ma. So you been missing me?” he asks.

  “Of course. Who else is going to do me like you?”

  “Nobody. Come on, I wanna take you somewhere.”

  “A’ight, where we going?” I ask him.

  “Just a little spot I got in the cut up in College Park,” Damien says.

  “A’ight.”

  I get in his truck, and we drive to College Park. As we drive to the house, I wonder to myself what Damien would do if I told him I was pregnant. Would he be happy, or cuss me out and deny it? He says he’s never fucked with a girl that looks like me before, but would he want me to have his baby? Oh, well, I guess we’ll never know. After I have this abortion, I gotta figure out a way to get King alone and put it on him.

  We exit off the highway and on to Riverdale Road and drive down to Flat Shoals Road to a little house down the street.

  “This is where you wanted to take me, Damien?” I ask him as I get out of the car.

  “Yeah, ma.”

  “Why? It looks like a traphouse. Why can’t we just go to your place?”

  “Naw, I got niggas over there handling business.”

  We go inside the house, and it’s not as shitty as it looked from the outside. It kinda looks like somebody’s house with all the pictures on the wall. Oh, well. I don’t care. We can do it anywhere.

  We walk into a bedroom, and Damien closes the door behind him. Damien unzips his pants and pulls out his dick.

  “Come here, ma.”

  Damien loves the way I give him head. I gave him head so good once that he bought me a $3,000 tennis bracelet from Tiffany’s. Let’s see if I can get him to buy me a car today. I’m sucking his dick like a milkshake, taking in as much of his dick as I can, slurping on his meat.

  “Oh, shit . . . yeah. Suck this dick . . . Ah . . .” Damien mumbles as he places his hand behind my head. He’s really getting into it now. Damien starts to move his hips back and forth and places both hands behind my head.

  “Yeah, bitch, suck this dick.” Damn, he’s shoving his dick down my throat so hard that it feels like I’m about to suffocate!

  A’ight, enough of this. I know it’s good, but this nigga is about to choke the shit outta me. I pull my head back and take him out of my mouth.

  “Damn, Damien, you trying to kill me?”

  “Naw, ma . . . it just felt so good.”

  “A’ight, just take it easy.”

  I pull off my clothes and lie naked on the queen-size bed. Damien gets on top of me and spreads my legs like a wishbone. He rams his dick into my pussy and starts to hump away. He’s being really aggressive today. He’s fucking me like he ain’t never had no pussy before.

  “Slow down, baby,” I say to him, but he ignores me as he bites on my nipples.

  “Ow! Damien, what the fuck!”

  Damien ignores me again and keeps on going. After about an hour in the missionary position, I start to get tired of Damien pounding my pussy like a madman.

  “Damien, I’m tired.”

  Damien then pulls out and f lips me over and rams his dick back in me doggy style. “Come here, bitch,” Damien says as he digs into me with his powerful, hard thrusts.

  Okay, I know some niggas get caught up in the moment, but that’s enough with the “bitch” comments.

  “Damien, stop . . . Come on . . . stop.”

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  “What? Oh, hell naw! Get the fuck off of me.” I try to get up, but Damien puts his body weight on me, and I collapse under his bulk

  “You love dick, don’t ya? You like to fuck, huh? Well, we gonna fuck! Just like you fucked Dre’s punk ass!”

  Oh, shit! He knows about Dre and me. Oh God, is he gonna kill me?

  “Damien please, it’s not what you think,” I say to him, but Damien ignores me and punishes me even more with his short, hard dick strokes. I think I start to bleed because I’m so dry, but Damien doesn’t stop.

  I’m gonna die. This crazy nigga is going to kill me. That’s all I can think as the pain becomes unbearable. Damien finally pulls out of me and stands up. My pussy is so sore. Damien grabs my shirt and wipes the blood off his dick and throws it in my face.

  “Damien . . .”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Damien backhands me, and I fall back against the bed.

  “You thought you could play me and fuck the one nigga I got beef with down here.”

  My face is still stinging from his blow. “Damien, listen to me—”

  “You ain’t nothing but a ho anyway.”

  “Damien, listen. I’m pregnant.”

  Damien looks at me then laughs. “Bitch, who you think you playing? I don’t give a fuck.”

  Oh God, he’s got no reason to believe me.

  “Are you gonna kill me?”

  “Kill you? Naw, I ain’t gonna kill you. You see, I’ve gotten kinda poetic with this revenge shit now. So since you like to fuck so much, that’s exactly what you gonna do.”

  Damien opens the door, and Horse walks in.

  “Oh, hell no. I ain’t doing shit with him.” I try to get up, and CRACK! Damien punches me in the side of my head and knocks the shit outta me. I bounce off the bed and hit the floor. Then he stomps me in my stomach. I scream in pain and see Damien towering above me like a demon. All I can think about is my baby. I’m gonna lose my baby.

  “What did you tell me? You know some bitches that would fuck Horse like Tyson Beckford? Well, guess what? You that bitch,” Damien says with a smile on his face. “Have fun, my nigga.”

  “A’ight, son,” Horse says as Damien leaves.

  Horse unbuckles his belt and pulls down his pants, grabbing his dick. Oh
shit, I see why they call this nigga Horse.

  “Get up,” Horse demands.

  Damien has knocked what little fight I have outta me. My pussy’s really sore, and I think it’s torn. My face is throbbing with pain, and I’m barely conscious after Damien’s punch. I curl up in the fetal position, scared to death.

  “Get up, bitch!” Horse yells. I don’t move. Horse reaches down and grabs me by my hair, pulling me up and throwing me on the bed.

  “Oww!” This foul nigga weighs at least 350 pounds, and he’s flopping on top of me like it’s nothing.

  “I’ve wanted your ass for so long now.” Horse forces my legs open, hurting my inner thighs. Then he shoves his dick into my battered pussy.

  Horse begins humping me like a wild dog in heat. All I can do is lay there silently and cry as Horse’s big, fat, smelly ass violates me repeatedly. The pain is excruciating as I feel blood flow down my legs. Horse kisses my neck, then sucks and bites my nipples. I’m in pure torture while Horse is having the time of his life.

  Horse pulls out of me and flips me over. I think that he wants to do me doggy style, but instead he rams his huge dick in my ass. I scream and try to pull away.

  “Aaarrrggghhh! Take it out!” Then I feel a painful blow to the back of my head.

  I must have blacked out for a few minutes. I awake to pain and the rank stench of shit and blood in the air. I’m lying flat on my stomach and can hear Horse’s fat ass huffing and puffing as he continues to pound my rectum. He must’ve hurt me internally, because I lose control of my bowels, and my ass explodes liquid shit all over Horse’s dick and stomach.

  “Hey! You nasty-ass bitch!” Horse pulls up off me and punches me in the ribs, knocking the wind outta me. “Stinking bitch!” Horse hits me again across the face.

  The last thing I remember is him pissing on me and then I black out again. I almost wish that Damien had killed me.

  12

  The Block is Hot

  JAYSON

  I drive to Decatur at about 9:30 p.m. to meet up with Lt. McNiven. I fill him in on the meeting going down this Saturday night. It’s time to end this so I can go back to just being Jayson Harper again, so I can be with Janelle for real. Look at me. I’m a cop in love with an ex-stripper. How funny is that?