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…
“Pleeeeeease!”
…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.
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.
“What the hell did I just see down there? What tha fuck was that?”
The child was still silent as I buckled him up as best I could and struggled to fit the keys into the ignition with a hand shaking violently with an overdose of adrenalin and a blood pressure that must have been in the one eighties. A bullet smashed through the driver’s side window and whistled past my nose. Scratch stood in the doorway aiming that big shiny .45 at my head. He looked normal again and he looked pissed. I ducked down and finally managed to fit the key into the ignition. More bullets whistled by over head as I started the engine and raced away from the withered crack-house with the raging white demon slumped in the doorway, his chest stained crimson, firing carelessly into the night.
««—»»
A deluge of gunfire thundered down upon the tank-like ’72 Impala as it rocked and swerved up G-town Avenue at heart-stopping speeds. It kicked up trash and garbage as it barreled through the somber deserted streets pursued by the gold-encrusted red Beemer. The entire time I couldn’t help but to doubt my sanity.
Why on earth was I trying to save this child? Why hadn’t I just blown him away along with his crackhead mother? It wouldn’t have been the first kid I’d killed. Why was I risking my life for this little crackbaby? Had all that talk from Mom and Yolanda started to get me? Was I developing a conscience? Was I getting soft? Was I looking for forgiveness? Redemption? If so it was too little too late. I had too much blood on my hands to ever be forgiven. Not by myself and not by God.
But then darker questions, more terrifying questions invaded my head making me want to cry out in terror.
Did I really just see Scratch turn into a monster down there? Is this mutherfucker really goddamned Satan? What the hell have I gotten myself into?
I tried to shut those thoughts out. What I thought I saw couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have.
A cascade of glass rained down upon my head as bullets ripped through the Impala like a stinging swarm of angry bees. I ducked, closed my eyes, and moaned like a bitch. I was scared to death, confused, and lost without that cocky, ignorant, madness that usually protected me from fear and doubt. It had been a long time since I had run from anything outside myself and I didn’t like it. It was funny, just hours ago I would have never doubted that I could take Scratch out with ease, yet here I was fleeing for my life as he chased my black ass all over creation. Under normal circumstances I would have just turned and capped this punk. But these were not normal circumstances. There was no way I could have missed Scratch at that range, even in the dark, yet there he was ten seconds off my ass. And then there was that bizarre transformation. It might have just been the shadows. It was pretty dark down there.
But what if it wasn’t? What if Scratch really is some kind of fucking monster?
Still, running from a battle just wasn’t my thing. I hated the idea of catching a bullet in my back when there was at least the opportunity to die like a man and maybe take him out with me, but I couldn’t risk getting the child killed too.
The tired, old car gasped and wheezed and seemed to cry out in pain—leaking fluids and spraying steam and noxious blue smoke from burning oil. The tires screeched in protest as I forced it into turns that would have taxed vehicles half its years. I was a terrible driver and for the umpteenth time it occurred to me how senseless it would be to avoid Scratch only to kill us both by crashing into a pole.
Burning rubber mixed with the smell of sulfur and oil, the sound of shattering glass, the whine of bullets, and the screams of tortured metal. Yet, the baby lay passively in the passenger seat as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was staring at me soothingly. A loving, trusting smile played across his face. Even amid the roaring chaos my heart began to lighten. If he lived he’d make one hell of a pimp or a con-man someday. He was playing me like Nintendo. His soft vulnerable-looking, brown skin and carelessly nappy hair alone made me want to protect him or die trying. Looking at him gave me the courage to keep my mind from shutting down and giving in to the desire to curl up on the front seat and just wait for the fatal bullet that would void my brain from my skull onto the dashboard. If any nigga on earth deserved such a fate it was damn sure me. I wondered if this little baby would forgive sins as profound as mine? If he truly knew what I was— a killer without a conscience being pursued to the death by another.
I decided to try to buy us some time by emptying a few rounds into Scratch’s BMW to see if I could slow his ass down. My blood was jackhammering through my veins so hard and fast I could feel it pounding in my ears. My mind felt like it was wading through thick mud and fog. Everything I did seemed a few seconds off. Aiming was a joke. I would’ve been lucky to hit the car at all let alone to hit Scratch.
I held the nine-millimeter Beretta in my lap trying to cock it with my right hand while steering with my left as the accelerator slowly crept toward ninety and traffic grew denser.
Come on, Brother. Get your shit together! I screamed to myself, still trying to fight off panic, emotional exhaustion, and eventual collapse.
This white mutherfucker can’t win! You can’t let that devil win. That bitch-ass peckerwood wouldn’t be shit without you—
That thought chilled me to the bone. Certainly Scratch didn’t owe his entire success to me. He was well on his way to becoming a serious ghetto star before I even met him. But I had helped. I had helped a lot.
Maybe I was supposed to pay for my sins by getting my cap peeled in a moving car and dying with the Baby Christ in my arms?
The Baby Christ? What tha fuck am I talkin’ about? Do I really believe that this little crack baby is Jesus? His pipe-smokin’ mother certainly wasn’t the Virgin Mary. What a fucked up twist of fate that would be for Christ to be reborn as some helpless little crack baby in the middle of a war zone with no one to protect him, but a crazy murder-for-hire nigga like me. Didn’t the church have secret orders dedicated to this sort of thing? Trained Vatican bodyguards or something? Maybe I should get him to a church and let them handle it? I thought as I fought to keep the Impala on the road whipping it around tight corners at over 80 miles per hour.
“Oww! Shit!”
A bullet ripped through my ear and seared a small furrow alognisde my head, inches from my temple. That familiar berserker rage, which had served me in so many street fights, descended on me like a black cloud blotting out fear and reason.
“Oh, you have got ta die now. I don’t give a fuck what you are. You’ve got to die.”
I switched the gun to my left hand and swung it over my right shoulder, aiming with help from my rearview mirror. I could see Scratch’s face through my shattered rear windshield. I slowed down to let the BMW get closer as I pointed my gun right into the face of the devil. White flame leapt into his eyes and his pasty face split wide with a gold-toothed grin. Calmly he raised the big shiny Colt .45 and pointed it at me. At this range he couldn’t miss and he was aiming much better than I was. The back of my head and center of my forehead started to itch and I knew that the bullet would enter and exit there if I allowed him to pull that trigger. I squeezed the trigger frantically and the obnoxious red Beemer swerved into a parked car, going up on two wheels and nearly flipping end over end. When it came to rest I could have sworn I saw something scamper out of the car on four long gnarled legs…something with wings and claws and eyes that burned like stars. It staggered and collapsed in the street and I turned my attention back to the road just as I ran a red light and barreled through the intersection of Germantown and Chelten Avenues.
Twin headlights bore down on me as I hit the accelerator, leavi
ng the wreckage of Scratch’s vehicle behind. I barely managed to maintain control of the car which was now doing over 90 miles per hour when my rear bumper was demolished by an old Chevy Nova heading down Chelten Ave. My bumper dragged on the asphalt shooting up sparks as I continued up the street with my foot firmly planted on the gas. I kept the speedometer at 90 until I hit Tulpehocken Street, then I slowed it down to 35. Now that I had escaped Scratch I couldn’t risk getting jacked by the police for speeding and having them discover a smoking gun in my car. In jail I would be a sitting duck and the child would be left unprotected. I made a right onto McCallum street and flew across Washington Lane. I came to a rest in front of Huey’s house, scooped the child up in my arms and leapt from the car leaving it still running. There were so many bullets in the seats and dashboard that it seemed almost impossible that none of them had hit us.
I know Huey will help me. He’ll know what to do. I know he’ll understand what’s going down.
The Impala belched out its last noxious breath and died as I staggered toward Huey’s front porch. The infant was still eerily calm. I crept up the crumbling concrete steps on legs that wobbled and shook from exhaustion as the adrenaline rush died off and I started to crash. I was staring into the child’s eyes again as if awaiting revelation. None came.
Huey’s house hadn’t changed a lot in the years since our childhood abortively ended in that abandoned lot with a child’s body dropping at our feet, a gun smoking in my hand, and the gold-toothed grin of a blue-eyed gangsta. The porch’s wooden deck was warped and splintered from water damage and neglect and the patio overhead was sagging as if preparing to succumb to gravity and crash down upon me. The cracked windows, old blue and white paint that was peeling and flaking revealing the bare brick beneath, the front door that was so badly warped that you could see light from inside all around the edges of it, was all just as it had always been. Nothing had changed but our ages and my predicament.
Yaccub's Curse Page 26