Dark Thirst

by Angela Allen

  She rises and walks over to her still-unconscious son. Nobody says a word. The only sound is Quick, tap-tap-tapping his nightstick gently against his leg.

  “You sure?” Smokey says.

  Shelly picks up Ricky’s limp hand. Nods. “I can’t live like this,” she says, kissing that precious hand. “We can’t live like this.”

  “It’s about time, that’s all I got to say,” Quick mutters.

  But the most dangerous person in the room doesn’t say a word. Smokey just pours himself some water into a small paper cup and takes four aspirin. For the headache he has—and the one he sees coming.

  To know monsters, you got to know the streets where they live. Like the streets of West Philly, where you always hear police sirens in the distance. And people arguing over all kinds of shit. And don’t let it be hot and muggy. ’Cause then you got a place with too many people, too fired up, on a night that’s just too damn hot. That’s when the monsters come out.

  Just ask my man Mace, an ex–football player who beats people up for a living. He’s the one over there all smashed up against the Lincoln Navigator with a gun pressed to his forehead.

  See, Mace told a joke about a monster. And somehow the joke got back to the monster. And the monster ain’t laughing.

  “Heard your big ass got jokes,” Lou said. “Jokes ’bout me. That true?”

  “Yo, I don’t even know what you talking about, yo,” Mace stammers. “Lou! We been cool for years. Come on now!”

  “Who told him then?” Lou snaps, jamming the gun even harder into Mace’s forehead.

  “I don’t know! I swear!” Mace says. “I ain’t even seen Ricky in days, man. Serious, man. You need to get with Ugly Nikki. Maybe he done blabbed your shit. You know how faggots do.”

  With his free hand, Lou gives Mace a punch to the gut that makes the big man’s knees buckle and flips on Mace’s asthma. Gently placing the barrel of his .45 right between Mace’s eyes, Lou asks softly, “Did you just call me a faggot?”

  “No! I ain’t say that!” Mace wheezes. “All I’m trying to—”

  “Well, if I’m not a faggot, then how do I know how they do?” Lou says. “Explain.”

  But before Mace can decide between thinking up a good lie and the best way to breathe, Lou decks him with a quick left hook.

  Maybe if I just lay here, he’ll just beat my ass instead of shooting me, Mace reasons through a haze of pain.

  “Time’s up, nigga. I’m thinking the best way to help you with that asthma is to give your big ass more ventilation,” drawls Lou. He steps back. Aims. Fires.

  By the time he walks away, Mace is already slumped against his new Lincoln Navigator, trying desperately to hold on to life as his blood spit-shines the pavement.

  But don’t think nobody gives a damn in the ’hood. See help is already heading his way and it’s wearing the cutest little Diana Ross–style bob wig and a beautiful beaded minidress like you’d expect to find on Cher. In Vegas. But Cher never made All-City in high school playing linebacker. This is Ugly Nikki. But don’t call him that to his face. He’s sensitive and plenty big enough to kick both you and your momma’s ass.

  The cross-dressing Nikki tenderly strokes Mace’s face, singing, “ ‘My world is empty, without you, babe!’ ”

  “Hi, Mace.” He smiles. “Tummy ache?”

  “Call…nine-one-one…hurry…” begs Mace.

  “Sorry, baby. Nikki hungry,” he says. Ugly Nikki opens his big mouth with the lipstick-covered lips. Ugly Nikki has big, ugly teeth. Ugly Nikki also has vampire fangs.

  Mace screams one of those loud-ass grade-B horror movie joints, the kind that seems to echo forever. But unfortunately for him, this is the ghetto, where niggas scream all the time. The next day, no one will even admit to hearing anything.

  You know how we do.

  Gunfire and screams on the streets of West Philly are old news to Shelly but she goes to her apartment window anyway, looking out at a night alive with monsters. Shelly can see Lou stepping out of the alley, crossing the street and heading her way, but it’s too dark for her to see Ugly Nikki making a meal out of what used to be Lou’s boy Mace.

  Shelly goes back to throwing clothes into an overnight carryall. There ain’t shit in her and Lou’s apartment worth much, unless you count his stuff, but she’ll be damned if she’ll leave Lou with only the clothes on her back. She stops for a minute to take one last look around, her eyes stopping on a newly framed family portrait of Lou, Shelly and Ricky that hangs on the wall. Lou had found it under some unpaid hospital bills. He dusted it off, hung it up, then beat her ass for not reminding him to pay the bills.

  While Shelly gathers up her clothes and her memories, Smokey looks over Lou’s ghetto-fabulous collection of wildly colored shirts and shoes. One of the first things to catch his eye is a pair of orange alligator shoes next to a pair of ice-gray Timberland boots. Closer inspection reveals a huge wad of one-hundred-dollar bills stuffed inside the Tims. He tosses the loot over to his daughter.

  “What is that smell?” he asks, reaching into the closet. Smokey pulls out a sheer, hot-pink number that’s at least three times larger than anything that would fit Shelly. He holds it up to his nose, sniffing it like a dog would an unfamiliar lamppost. He frowns, then tosses it as far away from him as he can throw it.

  One thing you got to know about Smokey: he knows smells the way Coltrane knows jazz. And that damn sure wasn’t Shelly he was smelling on that blouse. Or any other woman, for that matter.

  “He said he was drunk when it happened,” Shelly says, stuffing her favorite pair of gold hoop earrings into her bag. “But Ricky heard different. And told him so to his face.”

  “That’s when Lou shot him.”

  Smokey’s cell phone rings before he can comment on fathers who shoot their own flesh and blood. The call is from his other boy, Nate, who’s parked outside Shelly’s apartment in an old Ford pickup truck playing lookout. Most folks say Nate James looks a lot like NBA All-Star Kevin Garnett, the lean, bald-headed brother who plays center for the Minnesota Timber-wolves. But Nate’s more wolf than Garnett will ever be.

  “Lou’s heading your way,” Nate tells his father. “You want me to handle it?”

  “No,” Smokey says, low and dangerous. “Let him come.”

  Right on cue, Lou bangs on the apartment door. “Yo, it’s me! Hurry up! I gotta pee!” he yells. Lou is too lazy to look for his keys. If it wasn’t for his wife and kid, he’d spend most nights locked out.

  “Just a minute!” Shelly shouts back in a familiar routine. Inside the bedroom she slides open the window to the fire escape. It’s a getaway she’s used plenty of times before to escape the monster she married, but this time she stops. Looks her father in the eye. Neither one says a word but both are thinking the same thing: This is it.

  Lou bangs on the door again, that insistent, in-a-minute-I’m-going-to-pee-myself kind of bang. Shelly yells, “Coming!” but doesn’t move. “Do it,” she whispers to her father. Before Shelly can change her mind, her father has crossed the room and is rolling up the sleeve on her right arm. He wraps thick fingers around her bare arm. In seconds steam begins to rise from Shelly’s soft, brown flesh. The pain is short but intense and even as it ends she can feel something forming beneath her skin. Something alien. Something alive. When Smokey lifts his broad palm, branded on her skin in perfect detail is a snarling wolf’s head with glowing, red eyes. It is the same brand worn by Smokey. And Nate. And Quick.

  Her father gently leads her to sit on the bed. Smokey then closes the window, draws the curtains, cuts off the light and they settle down in the darkness to wait.

  Out in the hall, Lou’s bladder forces him to find his own damn keys. Damn bitch! She tried to lock me out! He slams open the door and sprints to the bathroom. Over the sound of his piss hitting the water, he hears someone in the bedroom.

  “Yo! What’s wrong with you?” he yells. “Didn’t you hear me banging out here? Shelly! Where the fuck you at?” />
  He zips up and steps into the living room, eyes darting back and forth, searching for even a hint of movement. Nothing. He notices the door to the bedroom is halfway open but he can’t see inside.

  From inside the bedroom, Shelly’s voice purrs, “Come on in, baby! Momma’s got a little surprise for you!”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I got one for you, too,” Lou replies, rubbing his hand across one of the lumps Quick’s nightstick left on his head. He pulls the gun from his waistband and adds a few more bullets.

  Don’t know if it was her or Mace done blabbed my shit, but ain’t but one way to make sure I got the right one. Besides, drug dealing was hard enough without having niggas running around thinking you was soft.

  He heads toward the bedroom, gun raised. If I slap her head against the big pillow, no one will hear a thing. He kicks open the bedroom door and comes face-to-face with pitch black. He can’t see a thing. Out of that darkness comes Smokey’s raspy voice: “Hello, Lou.”

  Oh, shit! That’s okay though. Tonight I got a bullet for Daddy’s ass, too.

  Still aiming his gun at the darkness, Lou uses his free hand to fish for the light switch. “Smokey? That you? Big, bad Smokey. Hard rock motherfucker, hiding in the dark like a little bitch?” Lou’s free hand flicks the switch.

  And finds a man-size wolf snarling at him.

  Quicker than a black cat can lick its ass, the creature’s on top of Lou, pinning him to the floor. Each bite separating bone from flesh, each slash of its razor-sharp claws spray-painting the apartment’s dingy, white walls with blood and human skin.

  Later when telling the story, Nate would describe Lou’s screams as similar to what you’d hear if a man got his testicles massaged by a weed whacker.

  In response to the screams, several neighbors turn up the volume on their TV sets. A few get up to check that their doors are locked. As one brother tells his wife: “Whatever is out there, let it stay the fuck out there.”

  Smokey, carrying Shelly’s overnight bag, exits the apartment building and walks toward the truck where Nate is waiting. Shelly is leaning against the side of the old Ford. She looks like she wants to vomit. Smokey hands the overnight bag to Nate, then turns to put an arm around Shelly as she loses the last of her dinner.

  “Damn. You never told me it would be like that,” Shelly accuses her father.

  “You never asked,” Smokey replies.

  Just as she pulls the door open to climb into the truck, she twists around and throws up again. Nate watches his sister, on her hands and knees heaving her guts up, and he shakes his head slowly in a been-there-done-that nod of sympathy. “You’ll be alright. Probably just something you ate,” he jokes.

  But the story doesn’t end there. You don’t get rid of monsters that easy.

  Lou is covered in blood and looks like a well-chewed sparerib, but damn if he don’t crawl on his belly out of that bedroom and into the hallway outside of his apartment. Just like a snake. So Lou is lying there, waiting on death or the tax man or both. But Lou always was too lazy to keep watch for long. That nigga nods off after a few minutes. To be fair, it might have been the blood loss that really knocked him out.

  The first thing he dreams of is a fine, young, teenage girl. This sista turns into a mist just like a cloud or something. In the dream, that cool mist floats down and covers his bloody body, oozing in through the open wounds and feeling better than the best heroin high, the best cocaine hit he’s ever had.

  Lou opens his eyes. He ain’t in the hallway no more. He’s inside what looks like a jazz club decorated by somebody who never went to China but really wanted to go there bad. There are little Buddha statues and hanging red lanterns everywhere. Lou can even see a pit below where a live sumo wrestling match is taking place. The club is packed with people belly to butt. Lou is seated in a private booth with dark windows that allow him to look out but no one can look in. Seated across from him is the girl from his dream.

  She’s honey-brown, with a little girl’s face and a grown woman’s body. Lou’s guessing she couldn’t be any older than sixteen. But she’s covered in diamonds and wearing an Armani suit, the skirt with a slit so high up her thighs he can almost see heaven. A Chinese dragon in black and red is tattooed on her neck.

  “I’m Malika,” she says with a throaty, British accent that makes his dick rock-hard. A James Bond fan, Lou’s always had a secret thing for British babes.

  “I’m here to make you an offer,” she says, giving a long look to his crotch. A waitress drops off a round of drinks: beer for Lou and what looks like a Bloody Mary for Malika.

  “No disrespect,” Lou says, “but you look kinda young to be up in here.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Malika purrs, the dragon on her neck moving as she speaks. “I got bit at seventeen, but I’ve walked the Earth for over three hundred years.”

  Lou gulps a beer and shakes his head. Damn, she had looked so good. You just couldn’t tell by looking who was crazy and who was not.

  “Well, you look good for your age,” Lou says, thinking he better play along since she was crazy. That might make it easier for him to get a piece of that ass. The crazy ones were always the hottest.

  He’s looking out the glass at the crowd to see if there’s anybody he knows and can hit up for some blow, when he sees Mace and Ugly Nikki. What the fuck! He knows for a fact he’d pumped enough bullets into that punk Mace to kill an elephant. And where the hell had Nikki come from? No one had seen him for weeks.

  “You thought Mace was dead?” Malika says with a wild laugh. “Oh, he is. You shot him, didn’t you, Lou? You killed Mace for telling your secret.”

  Lou reaches for his gun. He’d gotten good at that. But it’s not there. Puzzled, he looks down. His hand is covered in the reddest, darkest blood he’s ever seen. And he’s seen a lot.

  “You got a lot of blood on your hands, don’t you, Lou?” says Malika, sipping her bloodred drink. The sight of that drink is making Lou sick. “Do you want to guess where you’re at right now, Lou? I’ll give you a hint: Jesus doesn’t come down here too often. His office is upstairs, way upstairs!” Then she smiles. A big, wide, broad smile that shows all her teeth. All her vampire’s fangs.

  Lou jumps up to run, but he can’t move. His ass is glued to that chair next to that crazy bitch. After a minute he stops stuggling to get up. He must be dead after all: “Are you…? Is this…?”

  “No, I’m not and yes this is,” answers Malika. “You could say I work for Satan. This is an outer ring of hell, sort of like a good suburb a few miles from the heart of the ghetto. Play your cards right, and your soul gets to stay here. Light work, good drinks. Mess up and your soul ends up in the barbecue section.

  “The Boss likes your work,” she adds, signaling the waitress for another round of drinks. “He wants to send you back to do more. Everybody here is a sinner but he likes to pick out the really sick fucks and make them vampires. It drives the other side crazy. The Trinity likes seeing sinners get punished, karma and all that. But vampires are like a supernatural loophole. Technically, you’re being punished because your soul stays here. But you get to go back to the world with your memories intact and with the power to raise all kinds of hell. Sound good, so far?”

  Lou nods slowly. Come to think of it, there were some asses he still wanted to kick. Starting with his wife’s. But he wanted more.

  “I can hear your thoughts and I can see why the Boss likes you.” Malika laughs. “We have a few vampires who think they can be free agents. They don’t want to listen. If they were ordinary humans, we would strip their souls from them and torture them. But as vampires, they’ve already turned over their souls, so we have to give them something extra. That’s where you come in.” She pulls out what looks like the drug Ecstasy and a vial of crack.

  “Vampires do drugs?” Lou asks, holding both glass vials up to the light.

  “Not exactly,” Malika corrects. “It’s more complicated than just sniffing coke up your nose or shooting
up. The drugs have to be inside a living host. The vampire drinks the spiked blood of the host.”

  This was familiar stuff, thought Lou. Hustling was hustling whether in hell or in West Philly.

  “Tell me what you sell. What do you specialize in?” Lou says.

  “I’m a supplier. Ingredients, carriers, even premixed,” she says, moving closer to Lou. “I do a lot of business with the Russians,” Malika begins. “They have access to labs in the Netherlands and little lost girls from around the world. I got a Viking premix which features big-busted Polish chicks already loaded with X. I also sell Tropicals or what you’d call Latinas. And, of course, I provide Hot Chocolates.”

  “That sounds good, real good. What else you got for me?” Lou says huskily as he slides his hand into her lap and down between her legs. His fingers go searching. She’s already wet. Read these thoughts you little freak, Lou thinks. When it comes to women, Lou’s game plan is always the same: a little rubbing always leads to a lotta loving.

  Malika reaches under the table and pulls out a thin folder. She lays it on the tabletop and photos spill out. Quick. Nate. Smokey.

  “I’ve been watching them,” Malika says. “Oh, yes. Right there, mmmmm, yes. I can get you inside…oh, yes, slower there, that’s it, that’s it…but it will cost you.” She reaches under the table, unzips his pants and rubs up and down his shaft, feeling the blood running in his veins.

  Lou’s having a hard time staying focused. Somehow he manages to say the words, “Cost me?”

  She’s kissing him now. On the lips. On his neck. Hot tongue in his ear. “Your son.”

  He grabs her and hauls her close. Kissing her neck. Tongue in her mouth. Slipping a finger inside her thong. “You don’t want him. That little punk can’t do nothing for you that I can’t do better,” he breathes into her ear.

  She laughs and pushes him back. “That’s not what I want from him,” she says.

  Malika reaches under the table again. She pulls out a small envelope about the size of a quarter. Inside is a grainy, reddish-brown powder. She grabs Lou’s penis with one hand and rubs a little of the powder on the tip of his dick. Then she goes down on him, her fangs adding a new sensation to an old pleasure.