by Luis Samways
“I love you Betty,” he said.
“I love you Phil,” she replied, still sounding a little cautious.
Phil tapped her on the bum and went into the living room. He saw his kids watching their second movie. This time he didn’t have a clue which movie it was. They must have watched the first movie by now. Maybe it was a new movie. He didn’t really care. He just kissed both of them on the forehead and made his way upstairs.
He went into the utility room that stood just above the chandelier. It was a small cupboard; it was big enough to fit a few towels and had a large tank in it. Below the tank were some wooden floor boards. He reached inside the dark cupboard and felt for a cord. He tugged on it and a light came on. It hung above his head and swung from left to right, making sparse shadows project across the cracks of the floor. He stood there for a few minutes contemplating whether or not he should pry the wooden boards up. He decided that maybe it was best to do it at night when everyone was asleep.
“Too many witnesses,” he said, not quite believing he just referred to his family as witnesses.
A few hours had passed and the kids were in bed. He had kissed them goodnight and found himself pacing the hallway outside of their rooms. He had been pacing for a few minutes. He had a sweaty forehead and was oozing with anxiety. It was a good job that his wife was downstairs. He knew that if she saw him in his current state, maybe she’d be dialling an ambulance or something fearing he was about to die again. He loved his wife and all but her obsessive worrying always made him weary. Maybe down the line she would be one of those spouses who snapped and ended up killing her husband. More the reason he felt he needed to hide his current situation from her. God only knew what she was capable of.
“Get a grip Phil,” he said to himself.
He could hear himself clearly now and the thoughts that were running through his head were scaring him. Was he really that paranoid that he would suspect his wife of murdering him if she found out? He decided that it was best if he stopped his pacing and went downstairs. He needed to get his mind off his problems and back into reality.
When he finally plucked up the courage and went downstairs, he felt better. He didn’t know if it was the fact that the smell of cinnamon and pastry was filling up the house or he had managed to get a grip on his escaping sanity. Whatever it was, he felt good and had a second wind to him. A surge of energy that made everything feel alright. He no longer felt trapped. He felt that maybe he would get through it. Just maybe he would succeed and get the whole ordeal over and done with.
He walked into the kitchen to see his wife still slaving over the stove. She looked immaculate and well kept, even under such hot conditions. He admired her for her lack of quit and her inability to give up. She was such a strong woman, and it was her presence alone that made everything feel better.
“You should rest up, Betty,” he said, wrapping his hands around her soft but firm waste.
“When the Christmas spread is done, that’s when I’ll rest up,” she said, turning around and kissing him on the cheek. Her soft lips felt like heaven on his skin. It was nice to be home. It was nice to be with Betty.
“You want any help?” he asked.
“Keep me some company. That’s all the help I need from you dear,” she said.
Her easy going nature always put a smile on Phil’s face.
‘Such a lucky guy’ he thought.
He stayed there in the kitchen talking the night away with his wife. By the time the cooking was done, they were both covered in flower and sugar. What turned out as a playful game of “throw the food” soon manifested into a flower fight. It didn’t go on for too long. They soon realised that the effort of the clean-up that would surly follow wasn’t worth the fun of throwing flower all over the place.
“I guess it’s time to sleep,” his wife said, brushing herself down.
“Clean up in the morning?” Phil suggested.
“Sure,” she replied.
They both walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. There was a loud humming sound coming from the outside. It was helicopter. Betty pulled a face as she sat down on the couch.
“Not even on Christmas do we get some rest bite from the damn air police,” she said.
Phil nodded. It angered him as well. To be honest, he couldn’t remember an evening in his neighbourhood where the police weren’t blazing around in helicopters and squad cars. Boston sure had changed.
“Fucking animals ruining Christmas I say. Cant criminals take a day off and leave the damn police to refuel the helicopter?” Phil said.
His wife Betty agreed with a partial nod combined with a smile. She was sitting on the couch, staring at her husband with narrow eyes.
“I thought you said we were going to bed?” he said.
“Well we could, or you could rip my clothes off here and now and be done with it,” she said, undoing her apron and flinging it onto the floor.
“My, my, I guess I can’t say no,” he said.
He lunged onto the couch and started fondling his wife. He had her breasts firmly cupped in his hands when the front door to their house exploded from the hinges and landed on the living room carpet. A dozen armed police officers rushed in, screaming orders at the couple on the couch. They had their weapons pointed at Phil and his wife. Phil still had his hands on his wife’s breasts even though he was in shock.
“Get your fucking hands up. Boston Narcotics. Get your fucking hands up now!” the man with gun nearest to them screamed as he stood tall in the living room, nearly overshadowing the Christmas tree.
“What?” was all Phil could manage to say.
“Get up, get up now!” the man screamed.
Phil remained as stiff as it was humanly possible. A sudden onslaught of fear crept into his joints and prevented him from moving. He couldn’t muster any strength; he just sat there, holding onto his wife. She too was speechless. She hadn’t batted a single eyelid. She was as motionless as her husband, both of them frozen in time, embellished in fear.
“Get up! Get up!” the man shouted, finally pulling Phil off his wife.
“We have a search warrant for this property,” the heavily armed man said who was now joined by a few more men wearing the same outfit, as if it was a fancy dress party in Phil’s living room and he hadn’t been informed of the event.
“A search warrant?” Betty said under her breath. “What’s going on Phil?” she asked, finally turning her attention to her baffled husband.
Phil just stood there with a blank expression on his face. He couldn’t muster anything of any importance or sense. Nothing came out of his mouth bar the heavy raspy breathing that escaped through his pert lips.
“Answer me Phil! What’s going on?” his wife screamed, beating on his chest with her petite fists. “God damn it Phil! What have you done?” she started to cry.
Both he and his wife could hear the rumblings of footsteps above their heads as somebody rushed up the stairs and stumbled around above them.
“My kids are asleep! Don’t wake them…Not like this…Please!” Betty shouted.
The footsteps continued upstairs. A barrage of excited voices arose from the rafters and Phil hung his head in shame. He knew they found what they were looking for. It was as if they knew where to look.
“We have a positive. Around 18 kilos. White powder,” A voice said through the radio strapped on one of the armed men in the living room.
“Good, haul it in. Chief will love to hear the good news,” the man said, not letting his vision part from Phil’s. “Looks like you’ve been a bad boy Mr Rogers. A coke pile that big, that’s petty astonishing for such a family orientated man like yourself. Next time you try to get into the drugs game, make sure the people you are buying drugs from aren’t backstabbing assholes. That advice is free, but I’m afraid the rest of it is going to cost you around twenty five years,” the man said as he grabbed Phil’s lifeless arm.
Phil had nearly fainted by the time he was being esco
rted into the police car. His whole life was flashing before his eyes, and the memories were accompanied by the blue hue of lights that sat on top of the cruiser. The street he lived in was basked in the blue and red lights of the Boston PD. His neighbours had managed to make an appearance on their front porches. A few of them were on the phone, all of them were shocked. His wife Betty had attempted to run after him but she was being held back by a few female officers just beyond the front door. All that was left when the police cruiser door shut was him and his thoughts. Thoughts of regret and pity. Pity on himself for doing the worst thing he could do. All he wanted was extra cash for Christmas. All he wanted was the mortgage paid off before the bank foreclosed. But all that was left was a lifelong debt that he had to repay to Boston, through twenty five years in an 8x8 cell.
“Merry Christmas Phil,” the driver of the cruiser said as they drove off to county lockup.
Homeless Witness
A short
They called him Ray.
Ray “Needs Pay” Watkins was what most would describe as a homeless man, a man down on his luck amongst many other things. A man in need of money and food but somehow, for some unknown reason, Ray “Needs Pay” didn’t have a single one of those things, not even on a cold Christmas Eve in 2013.
He found himself sitting in an alleyway that was paved in stone and smelt of shit. The alleyway in question was situated in the “rough” part of town. The part of town that many wouldn’t visit past a certain hour. The part of town that many would avoid on a cold dark night. The thing is, Ray lived in that part of town and called that part of town home.
He didn’t fancy living the high life. He never envisioned himself as a suit wearing, job attending or vote counting citizen. Ray was much more than that. He saw himself as a risk taker. Not so much in the financial sense of the word, or the lifestyle sense of the word; no, Ray was more of a risk taker in the literal sense of the word. He would much rather risk not eating than working for pennies to eat at all.
He didn’t have a drinking problem, although some would suggest that he did. He had no problem with the amount he drank. In fact, he loved drinking, but the fact that he drank at all was always something that damaged his credibility, and that disappointing trait of his would come back to bite him in the ass during the next few hours.
Ray necked another mouthful of the brown stuff that he was so accustomed to swigging on such bitterly cold nights as this. He was hunkered down in the cold breeze of Christmas Eve. All he had to keep him warm was the throat numbing whisky he had in his company. He sat back in a pleasant slumber of half drunkenness and near hypothermia. He heard the trash bags he was sitting on crack and pop under his conservative weight. He could feel the cold sharp objects pierce through the trash and stick into his backside. Back in the day he would have screamed in pain and cried himself to sleep, but bodily harm was something he was so used to it seemed wrong not to enjoy it for what it was; the last bit of human reaction he had left in him. All the other human emotions were run dry, like a well in summer or the tears of a woman who had lost her child after two years of mourning. He was drained of all things compassion. He didn’t have a shred of humanity left in him, or so he thought at least.
The night trickled away much like the drain pipe that sat next to him that was emptying itself every second or so as the minutes marred into hours. He started feeling his usual jolly self when he heard the clock tower bell hit midnight. He started singing Christmas songs to entertain himself as he welcomed Christmas day 2013 into the present and marked the occasion with a stiff polishing off of his liquor. When 12.01am came, all that remained was an empty bottle and a near coma toast homeless man stumbling in the refuse of Boston Central.
A car’s engine echoed off the alleyway bricks and headlights hit his eyesight nearly blinding him. Ray blinked a few times thinking that maybe he was hallucinating. He wasn’t, a car was pulling into the alleyway. It came to a stop a few yards away from him. He was close enough to see the car but low enough to remain undetected. He was used to people stumbling into his home. He figured the car in front of him was occupied by a man who had just ushered a hooker into the alleyway. No doubt he’d witness the car bouncing off its suspension in a couple of minutes and by the time he fell asleep, the man would have shot his load and pulled out of the alleyway. His opinion on the idle car was quickly tarnished when a man emerged from the driver’s seat holding a shotgun.
Ray’s heart rate sky rocketed and he nearly pissed his pants. He immediately thought the shotgun wielding man was coming for him but when the man went to the trunk of his car he finally realised something else was happening. Suddenly another man emerged from the passenger side of the car. He too was wielding a weapon, but it was an axe. The blood in Ray’s veins was running cold as it hurtled from his heart to his head, making him feel woozy. He tried to remain as quiet as possible as he witnessed the two well-dressed men stand near the back end of the car. He had the frame of mind to catch a glimpse of the number plate. It was one of those personal plates.
It read “Dr3ad 11”.
Ray was in panic mode. He knew what was happening. He had heard of things like this happening before. Many homeless people would witness crimes taking place. The police were notorious for dismissing the homeless as witnesses. Ray wasn’t even sure if what he was seeing could be classified as a crime yet. Sure, two men were armed but nothing was happening. For a few minutes the men talked in a language he wasn’t familiar with. For all he knew they could have been speaking gibberish. The voice in his head was telling him the men looked and sounded eastern European. But the rational side of him was asking himself if he knew what an eastern European sounded like.
Ray thought about running but the alleyway was a dead end. The only exit was through the front, and unfortunately for him, a big black Audi was blocking it. The two sharply dressed men continued to talk. Ray was wondering whether they were talking about sports, broads or killing people. He didn’t know many people who talked about broads while holding guns, nor conversations about sports in the presence of axes. He made himself laugh a little. What an absurd thought process he was having, and at a really bad time as well.
Ray cupped his mouth, trying to muffle his hysterics. He didn’t know if this sort of reaction was normal when faced with a possible life-ending situation. All he cared about was staying off their radar. Maybe he judged them too quickly and they were returning props from a movie. Maybe they were contemplating a vigilante mission in Boston and ridding the streets of paedophiles and gang bangers. Maybe Ray was thinking too much and didn’t realise what he was getting himself into.
Suddenly the man with the axe opened the trunk of the car. A red light shone on his face. It was coming from the beacon attached to the trunk. Ray held his breath as both men looked down into the trunk. They stood there, all tough and sober looking. They looked pissed off and whatever they were planning, it didn’t look like it was going to pan out for whoever they had in mind.
“You fucked up. You will now die,” the man with the axe said. His broken English frightened Ray to the core.
The man swung his axe and ray could hear it crunch on impact. And then there was a scream. A male voice pleaded for mercy. The axe came down once more. Another sputter of terror. A blood spatter to the man’s face and then the shotgun went off. There was no more screaming, just silence and the smell of burning gunpowder in the air.
Ray nearly fainted but held himself together. He knew his life depended on his silence and he wasn’t going to say anything. He knew he had just witnessed a murder. He didn’t see it, but he damn heard it and there was no mistaking the fact that they had just axed to death a man, and then shot him.
The two men standing near the Audi looked at each other for a brief period as if they had heard something. It was then that Ray thought he was going to die. But they shrugged at each other and threw their weapons into the trunk. The boot was shut tight and the men both got into the car. The engine turned on and the hea
dlights shone into Ray’s eyes one again. They were gone as fast as they had entered and Ray was left in the cold where he had been before all of this had happened. The only difference now was the fact that he was scared for his life and needed to get out of the area. He couldn’t move though. There was something stopping him from the ability of free movement. He didn’t know what it was but whatever was stopping him needed to let go, or he was about to cry out for help.
After a few minutes he had calmed down enough to be able to get up. To make things worse he realised he was drunk, really really drunk at that. He cursed himself for being a no-good bum. If he wasn’t drunk he could have avoided this. He was sure of it, sure of his stupidity to come to the alleyway and get trashed. If he hadn’t, he could be safe at that moment in time, but in reality he wasn’t. He was far from safe and he needed to get to safety before he was put into a trunk and axed to death too. The men could return for all he knew and finish him off. Every second he wasted there was plenty enough time for the car to make it around the block and return for him.
It was with that encouragement that Ray shifted his ass and was out of that alleyway quicker than he had ever left a place before. The alleyway was far behind him as he ran through the city centre and through passerby’s. No one paid much attention to the terror in Ray’s face. All they saw was a homeless man making funny faces as he ran through the crowded streets. People with shopping bags avoided him, mothers were holding onto their children as he ran past them as if he was the threat. If only they knew what he had just witnessed, maybe the motherfuckers wouldn’t be too quick to judge.
“Motherfuckers,” he said under his breath as he gasped for air.
He continued to run. He didn’t know where he was going, but he needed to find something. His legs were on autopilot. His brain was on overload. Any more thinking and he thought he’d sufferer a meltdown and his brain would fry.
Stopping in the middle of the street, trying to find some breath he spotted a safe place. A place he was certain would endear him and his story. The place he spotted was the Southside Police Precinct. It looked refreshing in its clean street lit shadow as it stood tall and overshadowed him with fear and relief. He contemplated whether or not going into the police station was worth the hassle. He thought long and hard before taking the first few steps towards the Precinct’s entrance.