by Brick
Hood Misfits Volume 3:
Carl Weber Presents
Brick & Storm
www.urbanbooks.net
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Hood Misfits Volume 3: Carl Weber Presents
Acknowledgments
Intro - Enzo
Chapter 1 - Shy
Chapter 2 - Angel
Chapter 3 - Angel
Chapter 4 - Enzo
Chapter 5 - Angel
Chapter 6 - Enzo
Chapter 7 - Angel
Chapter 8 - Enzo
Chapter 9 - Angel
Chapter 10 - Enzo
Chapter 11 - Angel
Chapter 12 - Shy
Chapter 13 - Enzo
Chapter 14 - Angel
Chapter 15 - Enzo
Chapter 16 - Angel
Chapter 17 - Angel
Chapter 18 - Enzo
Chapter 19 - Shy
Epilogue - Micah
Copyright Page
Hood Misfits Volume 3:
Carl Weber Presents
Brick & Storm
Acknowledgments
So here we are, book three. We never saw it coming. Thank you to all the original Misfits, the ones who were with us when this book was titled Player, and the original Hood Misfits books were still making waves on the self-publishing circuit. Jazz Nicole, Lenika, Dymetra, Laura Hughes from the U.K., Athea, 556 Book Chicks, Christina Jones, Quadir, Lizzy, Law, Jeanette James, and all the rest of our ENGA family: you guys run out and grab our books, read them, and review them as soon as we release them, and for that, we will always have love for you. To all the rest of the fam, new and old, thank you. Without you there would be no us. To Brenda Hampton, we will never be able to say thank you enough for taking a chance on us.
We hope you enjoy Enzo and Angel’s story in the ENGA Series as much as you did Trigga’s and Diamond’s. Who knows? You may see them pop up in this book as well. You have to read it to find out. Now we’re on to the next book, the next story. Let’s see where it takes us.
Intro
Enzo
Prelude
I heard somewhere that you can’t blame a nigga for growing up the way he did. If his environment was foul, and if he didn’t have the right support around him, then what did you think he was going to be? Foul. That was just the nature of things and my world wasn’t so different.
In the jungle called Atlanta, I was the newest commodity for the Atlanta Nightwings, the NFL’s number one champs two times running, and I planned to make it three. Allow me introduce myself. My name is Shawn Banks, but the public and people in my past knew me as someone else. Before I got into this world, an environment that I was still learning my place in, learning what I could and could not do, I was just plain ol’ Enzo, a twenty-year-old hoodlum in the streets.
Because I had been sponsored by Damien Orlando, a well-known street king who ran the streets of Atlanta with an iron fist, to be in the Nightwings Football Camp for Kids, I had a debt. The camp was a program designed to showcase kids with potential to be the next big thing for prospective colleges and, later, the NFL. Damien had been the kind of street lord who found a way to make a profit off of any- and everything; and most of us kids in the camp knew we had a better chance at getting scouted by colleges if Dame had his name on us.
I found myself caught up in the hype and promise of a better life, if only I’d do his bidding. Shit, as a kid coming from the worst the hoods had to offer in Chicago, better known as Chriaq these days, Dame’s offer seemed like a way out. Dame had promised most of the world at our feet and all we had to do was let him sponsor us. At least, that was the lie he’d told. I had to be a goon for one of the Trap’s well-known street demons, a nigga who many called the son of Satan himself. The deal was I move weight and be a killer for him, and he would ensure my spot in college and the NFL. That nigga had pull like that. Dame could be the illest of thugs one minute and the shrewdest of businessmen the next. The moment I was set up into his world, my life changed. Actually, even before that, the day I moved from the south side of Chicago, Illinois—Englewood to be exact—everything changed.
See, all my life I’ve had to take care of myself and my little brother. Fuck that, I also had to take care of my mom when she started losing herself to drugs. As far as I remembered she was a good woman, but she always had her dark moments where she’d lock herself in her room and leave us to take care of ourselves. It only got worse the older we got. When I was around twelve years old I was doing my usual thing. Had taken the green line L all the way to its last stop of Ashland and Halsted so I could head home and walk my block, what I called “the Wood” and others called Englewood.
Trucking over broken glass, cutting through dope boy zones and where some drugged-up homeless liked to get high near empty lots and abandoned churches and buildings, I learned how to be a fast little dude. Making sure I hit up the corner store to pick up some snacks for my four-year-old baby brother Drew and me, I also grabbed some extra stuff so we could clean the house. That day, I was stopped on the street by Drew’s babysitter, an older woman who had grown up in Mississippi but moved up north long ago, Missy Charlene, as she sat on her porch watching Drew. I had thought our mom was gonna pick him up after work and after getting her hair done, but there he sat, playing with his toys with some other little kids. Just like all the times when mama had dropped Drew off, I always stopped by Missy Charlene’s on my way home just to be sure Drew had been picked up.
Heading up to the porch, I could tell by Missy Charlene’s face as she chewed on her tobacco and spit it on the ground that something wasn’t good. She had rollers in her hair with a bathrobe on that looked more like a muumuu.
“Yo’ mama ain’t been by here to get this boy. Figured something must be wrong. No matter her habits, she always picks up the boy when she says,” Missy Charlene said.
“How long he been here?”
“Since ’bout ten this morning. Something not right.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a secret that mama had a habit back then. Sometimes she could hide it well. Other times she couldn’t. But I still knew Missy Charlene was right. Mama could be high as a kite and still remember to get Drew.
Packing up my baby brother, I slung my backpack on my left shoulder and snatched up his bag, taking his smaller hand in mine and heading home. Missy Charlene yelled at us to come back and visit if everything wasn’t good: her code for telling us to come back to her house if we needed to. Long story short, when we got home, our moms was locked up in her room. I cleaned up my baby brother, gave him a slice of bologna and a piece of bread with a sliced apple on the side, ’cause that was all we had, and some water, then I went to check on moms like I always did.
Turning that knob to her bedroom door was the game changer that day. She lay in a fetal position, tears wetting her cheeks, as she stared off in a blank state with a needle in her arm. I knew without touching her no spirit lived in that body anymore. Remembering that day, I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sad and I wasn’t mad, I just was. I was used to this, since I was old enough to remember. When I was a little shorty she’d get real mad, and throw shit around the house sometimes, yelling at me and later Drew when he was born. I used to think she hated us, but the older I got, I realized she really was running and hiding from the nigga who helped create us: our pops. I never knew the cat. Only heard whispers that he was some moneymaker down in the A, who got locked up and died in prison, so I didn’t care. I just knew whenever he was in town, she’d send us to our babysitter, and then she’d go missing for a couple of days before returning home.
Thinking on my mom, I can say it was sad when all a parent left behind to look
out for their kids was information in the form of a phone number and address elsewhere. That phone number and address led to my tía Iya, or Shy as some knew her on the streets. She came and got us days later, packing up our stuff, and moving us to her apartment in Decatur, Georgia. It was crazy for me ’cause I never really knew nothing about her.
She’d visit once a year, leaving us with clothes, gifts, and money that I’d hide. Then she’d be gone, leaving us with her hugs, kisses, and a sad look in her eyes. Back then on that day she got us, she looked at us for hours with tears in her eyes, sitting in a dingy broken chair, in her all-white linen dress and long black hair resting over her shoulder in twisted locs, before hugging us tightly and giving us kisses. That was the only day I’d ever see her that vulnerable, because after that she was hard, but loving, in a way me and Drew never had.
Tía Shy worked as a nurse, but to get extra money she’d work the weekends at the Grove Lounge where she’d spit poetry, hit some lyrical bars, and present herself as one of the hardest conscious rappers in the A. My aunt was slick with it. When she wasn’t making us listen to old-school jams like Miles Davis, Public Enemy, or Pac, we were growing up listening to her outdo niggas’ bars like Common and even Nas sometimes. Money was good for us. She moved us from the Trap to another fly house in Decatur positioned across the street from a sweet older lady who was taking care of her Bible and rap-quoting grandson. He was a thick, big-ass kid who was some months older than I was. My aunt would watch him sometimes when his grams needed time to herself for church or sometime his grams would watch us.
Growing up there was a’ight until the streets got turned into a war zone. He and I got recruited through our school to be a part of this football camp where Dame took an interest in us. Life was golden only for a short time, and my relationship with my aunt became hard; but she never stopped giving love and supporting my brother and me, even when she got sick and lost her baby because of the sickness. Life ain’t perfect, but it is what it gives. Like I said, I always was taking care of myself or someone else, and after everything my tía did for us, it gave me fuel to be the best running back I could be.
The second time my life changed was when the words “Dame’s dead” was echoed around the Trap. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I sat relaxin’ in the custom black-on-black rimmed-up Escalade that Dame’s goons handled. I had just got done doing my rounds at the City, making sure the dimes got on stage and did what they were known to do. Pussy, ass, tits, and more pussy was all around me. I pretty much didn’t give two shits ’bout it, only because it was an everyday thing for a nigga, and chicks teasing my dick in a club like this only pissed me off. I wasn’t about the fantasy of pussy, more like the reality of that gushy, which, personally, wasn’t that hard to get.
For a nigga like me, all I had to do was flash a smirk, and tilt my head back, and chicks seemed to rain from the skies to jump on this dick. Was I saying that in arrogance and cockiness? Naw, not really. Too many chicks would come up to me and tell me how fine, cute, and different I was because I sported a hooped nose ring, with my wavy flat top, chin beard, and, as one chick said, I was Egyptian golden honey toned. Yeah, whatever on that. I also had many chicks whispering that my dick was so good that Dame should make me a ho for broads. That shit wasn’t funny to me.
I strolled through the digs, combing the place for the standard regulars. I saw old man Scoop sitting in his cream and red suit, holding his dick and smoking on a Cuban. He watched a pretty honey with a lush fat ass, pouty lips, sparkling, silky flesh the color of curry, swish her crinkled, long black hair over her shoulder and then climb the pole to slide down it and drop into a scissor split against her girl’s pussy. The whole scene had every thirsty nigga in the club standing. They spilled their drinks, clenched down hard on blunts and cigars between their teeth and made it rain in the club. Both dimes—an exotic-looking caramel treat named Angel, and Bubbles, a chocolate, thick, innocent but sultry -looking dime—were a part of Dame’s mamís.
Angel was a killa in the club. Every night, niggas filled the spot up just to see her twerk. It was the same with Baby G too, but, yeah, she wasn’t around anymore. Heading through the spot, I kept my eyes on everyone who wanted to be a threat to the dimes. Patrons knew not to touch unless they were uppin’ the right amount of dough.
Right now, none of the major big spenders was here, so I could be real lax in how I watched the place, which was cool for me. I was tired from running the streets and training. The past couple of months seemed crazy as fuck. Dame seemed to be on some other shit with his runs and having us making trades.
Word on the street was that a lot of bosses were slowly taking their money away from him, which meant that nigga was going to be coming down hard on us soon, and blaming us for everything, when in reality it was all him. Ever since he had dipped into that young chick with the pretty doe eyes, Ray-Ray, Dame had been on planet Godzilla. Running around with an open mouth, swollen chest, and stomping on everyone that came his way. Nigga was crazy, but it wasn’t my shit to worry about. I had a deal with him and he had one with me. He’d keep me trained up in football camp and I’d run his dope and be his shield while taking some classes at Georgia Tech. The negotiation was good with me anyway. I was good at zigzagging the streets and the field.
Lights stopped their flashing as the music slowed down into an island beat. I gave a nod to the dimes as I walked by with a smile heading to the back. Each dime kissed my cheek, slipping me some extra Gs for treating them right, and I strolled out to switch places with another homie, Nightmare. Nightmare was a young dude like me, all of us the same age, and he was training up for the basketball program Dame also ran to snatch up young dudes in the streets. He was a tall, lanky but swole dude.
He had tats all over his pale yellow skin with cuts that he said were tribal marks. I said he was a lying motherfucker with that shit, but he just flashed his big teeth and would always say it was true. Nightmare and me always found ways to work together. I’d call him Degrassi ’cause that nigga looked like he was ready to spit bars on “No New Friends,” but in reality, I knew dude lived up to that nickname Nightmare. Whenever he touched an enemy, they never was the same.
As I opened the door, plumes of smoke slapped me on the left and right sides while I climbed into the ride. “Damn, Degrassi. You deep throat that shit enough, homie?” I teased, coughing and cracking the windows of the ride.
Nightmare sat in a Cadillac pose, his wrist resting on the steering wheel with a fat one between his fingers. A grin was on his face, making that nigga look creepy to someone who didn’t know him. But me, I knew he was high as God. He passed that shit, I took a nice hit, and I slid back in my seat, relaxing.
Damn, the blaze was good.
“Eh, yuh kno’ I dun play wit’ mi good-good. Mi lick di shot lika mi love mi gyal up,” he slurred. Nigga’s eyes were so red, I thought he had pink eye and the shit was due to be crusting over anytime now.
I laughed hard at his Patois. Dude was born in the Trap but both his parents were from the islands. He was crazy by blood, which made him crazy in the streets and crazy on the court. That’s why we were cool. Same agenda, same goals, used the Trap as a way to get out and get that money in the game.
We sat windin’ down, shit talking about everything and nothing. Nightmare started spitting about the last moments of Doughboy, when Trigga blasted that nigga’s dome out.
“Man, nigga eyes looked like two eggs sliding off a piece of toast, man!” he clowned. Dude laughed so hard that he started coughing.
Me, I had to sit back and look at him as if the nigga was crazy. “Like two eggs sliding off a piece of toast? Homie, the fuck is that? No, that cat looked like he had just found out he had swallowed acid. Nigga was goneeee.”
Nightmare slapped the steering wheel hard, sounding like a horse due to holding on to the good smoke in his throat. We kept talking shit about how wack Doughboy was while passin’ our hits. Every twenty minutes, we’d change
places with House, another guard for the girls, and grab whatever the dimes needed, be it food or some shit that they needed for their outfits. I had just got back in my ride when our cells started vibrating.
The mood was quickly killed when we were told to get to the main house fast by Dame. We knew when that nigga put 187 in the texts that every nigga associated with him needed to come G’d up. So, that meant that we had to stop what we were doing, leaving the dimes at their work, and handle business.
By the time we got to the big house, a car speeding like a bat out of hell almost hit us head on, but swerved in time to miss us. I had my SIG Sauer Mosquito .22LR pistol loaded up in my hand, my other weapons of choice ready for play, when I glanced up at Nightmare and House both shouting, “Shit!”
Shock hit me hard; we all stepped out of our rides as fire kissed the skies. On the lot seemed to be the majority of Dame’s goons’ rides. I could name off who was in the house just by the rides that were there. But it was the blacked-out Escalade that had the familiar license plate GRIZZLY that had me feeling fucked up.
I stood in silence for a long while. After a minute, I stopped tripping and started to feel relieved as texts started hitting us with rumors about what had gone on inside. No one was sure about how everything had actually started but word was Dame was dead. There were pictures of his mutilated body hanging over his bed, a bed no one touched but that anal-ass nigga, with the words E.N.G.A. painted in blood over the carved letters DOA. All of us stood shocked.
“No way, man. That shit gotta be Photoshopped. It gotta be,” House’s confused voice said near me.
I said nothing. I knew the letters just like they all did. I already knew that it was time to go. My debt to that nigga, and the possibility of me not making out of the Trap, was done with the crackling of the fire in front of me. House ran forward, still surprised like we all were. I turned to look at Nightmare.