This is more what I'm going for.
Still a rough draft.
~EPISODE ONE~
Origins
As the
knives go in and the blood starts to seep over their silver edges I am wrought
with a moment of indecision. The man
underneath my blow is half way to dead and with one more push forward it’ll be
lights out. In this instance with a man
I had no quarrel with I am faced with this choice. If I stop now and allow his wife to call the
paramedics he will be saved, but if I continue with my forward momentum she
will call the police, and she has seen my face, and while her husband is alive
she may find it in her heart to forgive me my brutality. It’s a large if and the face of agony in
front of me is begging the question on what I will do next. I know this because once upon a time I was
in his position, wondering what the man who had me trapped in his death trap
would be doing with me. It was a face
begging for mercy but wishing for death, whatever would come would end the pain
eventually.
This
isn’t some random event though. My
knives didn’t find this man by mistake, he is my mission and while I appreciate
the frantic questioning in his expression I press my blades in and blood in his
throat sends a gurgling sound up so that a puddle of red ooze drips from the
corner of his mouth and his eyes show pain for the last time. I envy this man, this random target I was
ordered to elimate. I envy that his
troubles have ended, I do not envy the stupidity that got him in this
position. But as I’ve said I was once
upon a time in this position as well.
I
remember the day it happened it was overcast and humid out. One of those days that in appearance looked
cool as hell but in reality was hot as actual hell. That sticky hot that causes your shirt to
cling to your back and your skin to become oily and unbearable. We were sitting in our apartment. My girl Allison and I, we had just made love
to each other and since the A/C had busted we hadn’t bothered to return our
clothes. I was resting my back against
the headboard and her slender bare back was pressing against my chest and her
hair was bunched up into my shoulder.
“What
do you love more?” She asked me.
I
remembered that question coming out of the blue, but she everything about her
was like that. She had a habit of
surprising me, usually in good ways but then things often would become off
kilter. It was a signal that she was
entering the darker side of her bi-polar attitude.
No
one could blame her though. The first
time I saw her after all she was on her hands and knees with some asshole
slamming himself inside of her. I was
dropping off a bag of product to this asshole drug dealer/pimp. He was sitting in a back room so that I had
to go through the halls of his massive unkempt penthouse. The smell of cat piss was prominent but there
were no cats. The carpet was soiled so
that no one would be able to guess its original color or texture. And through this lovely den of vice I found
him, a bag of coke in my hand and a snub nose under my belt. His hair looked as though it were drenched
in the grease from a shitty pizza from a crap pizzeria. That kind of grease that if you were to fold
the piece in half and squeeze could fill up a glass. He always wore this white lab coat. It was rumored he dabbled in creating drug
cocktails. Expirments of his own design
that were just as likely to have a drop of salt as to have a drop of
bleach. He called himself the doctor.
“Beautiful
isn’t she.” He said underneath the
shaking light of a desk lamp that rested on a table alongside the bed that
Allison and this prick resided on. I
turned my head to her as it was hard not to take notice of such a sight. There was initially already a knot in my
stomach at the initial sight, a knot of horror and rage. This wasn’t how I conducted my
business. It was the act of a circus
side show, The Doctors business, a twisted demented version. He was right though, she was beautiful, but
beyond that I saw her misery, I saw the tears.
It wasn’t even a choice, and I made it my duty to rescue this woman.
“How
much?” I said.
“Five
hundred a round.”
“No,
to take her home.” I correct. That’s when he turned to me and sniggered at
my suggestion. But I turned my
attention away from Allison and to that son of a bitch and I looked him dead in
the eye. “Something funny?”
Again
he laughed, one of those laughs that is accomanpied by the noise of his nose
trying to help the air escape a blocked nostril. His eyes were big and he cast them up and the
bloodshot nature of them was evident, his eyes met those of the man behind
Allison and he smiled broadly. To me he
said, “What is she worth to you? A fine
pussy like that bring me in a lot of cash.
Suppose I said she’s not for sale, what could you offer me to change my
mind? To make me loosen up by
code.” He laughed again, but his eyes
were wild and serious. The tone in his
voice demonic and feral.
“This
shipment and every shipment for the next year are on the house.” I said without a second thought.
“Seems
like you’d some of your partners would be upset with you for giving away blow
like that. No profit made from a let’s
face it a major client of yours.” He
wasn’t lying. The Doctor was indeed a
major contributor to my growing enterprise but I looked over at Allison again,
her eyes were cast down, still exposed, her hips still gripped by that son of a
bitch behind her.
“Looks
like I’ll have to put some of my own money back into it. Don’t you worry yourself with my financial
predicament. You got enough on your
hands to worry about. Why don’t you
imagine how much more money you can put into your little carnival here.” I mocked him and he stood up at that like a
flash of lightning.
I
reached for the snub nose and his hand landed over mine and a smile knife
pressed its tip into the bottom of my jaw.
“If you have a problem with
people like me, maybe you should find yourself another line of work. You can save this one girl, but not all of
them. What then? Next time you see me what will you offer me
to save the next whore? You think you
can come in here with your corn bread smile, your hospitality and small town
charm. You are in The City now boy. “
Inside
my heart beat with the force that only comes with the fear of an inevitable
demise, but I was usually like that.
Outside I focused my attention and tilted my head forward so that I felt
the tip of his blade puncture the first lair of skin. “Do we have a deal then?”
Instantly
he released his hold, and I relinquished the grip on my pistol. He turned to the man behind Allison and
snarled, “You heard the man, get out of her, she’s his now.”
“I
paid a grand for this bitch, I’m gonna get my fill of her.” The client challenged. The Doctor in a blinding motion through the
knife he had threatened me with and it entered deep into the stomach of that
bastard.
“The
fuck!” The man exclaimed unsure if he
should remove the knife or not.
“Get
up Allie, you belong to Mr. Harrison here now.”
He held his hand out to her and she took it and crawled off the
bed. Then I reached for a long yellow
dress that I assumed to be hers that was draped on the back of the chair The
Doctor had been sitting in and threw it on over her head. She found her way into it and stood in
place. She was afraid of me.
Back
in the bedroom where I hold her naked body against mine I respond to her
question, “What do you mean what do I love more?” The question coming is a sign of another
depressive state. When I walked out of
that hellhole of an apartment with my arm calmly on the small of her back I
could feel her heavy breaths. In a
place like The City you usually expect things to get worse. A lowlife would buy someone from another
lowlife. There were no levels this place
didn’t sink to. Truth is I had no
interest in sleeping with her. To me she
had the potential to recover herself, get out of this place and find a way to
forget things. I may have found my
calling here, but not everyone was so lucky.
Every facet of this metropolis was corrupt and if you didn’t step in
line with the seedy philosophy you were broken down and destroyed. That’s what Allison was, destroyed. She’d heard stories of people getting their
start here, with big eyes of ambition.
What they didn’t tell you was what you’d have to do to get there. Or what you’d have to do to stay there. She was an easy target.
“Do
you prefer your job over me?” She
continues, and I listen and feel to her breathe in front of me. The job she referred to her was a line in the
drug dealing business. My cousin got me
hooked first. When I was at a high
school party after some shitty dance this two bit dealer came by offering the
kids blow. I took some but never
partook. I held onto it, and then
decided to test my luck. I offered it at
twice the price the dealer had charged, and I offered it to people who wouldn’t
be caught dead dealing with no “bottom feeders.” People were willing to pay more to avoid
their reputations being sullied by being spotted with the wrong people. In a matter of no time I found my niche. That isn’t to say, as The Doctor clearly
illustrates that I continued only dealing with the cleaner cut of the junky
community but it did mean that I developed a reputation as an approachable
gentleman dealer. Soon I wasn’t only
selling to the people with clean reputations but those people who were too
scared to seek out dealers on their own.
The chicken shits who thought every drug dealer had a side business in
murder. I was there in. But there comes a point where you can’t grow
anymore, my small mid-western home wasn’t growing any bigger if anything it was
shrinking. Not only on a traditional
economic level but in our little underground illegitimate business we were
seeing clients drop off and disappear.
Hauling ass to the next towns.
That’s how come I came to be in this place.
Despite
the terrifying crime rates, people still came to The City in droves. And so
I knew I would be set for the rest of my life.
“I love you more than anything Allison.”
I said, and I wasn’t lying. “My
job, is like my hobby. You love your
hobbies, but you don’t want to screw your hobbies, you can’t. You can’t hold them either. But you enjoy them. There it is.
My job I enjoy, you I love.”
She
was silent. All I could hear was her
breathing.
After
the rescue we ate a late dinner at a dive bar.
The lightning was shit, but she had whispered that she didn’t want to be
seen by anyone who could have possibly known her. So we went two blocks too far and sat down to
a pill of beef fat with a side of beef trim.
It was shitty food, but she devoured everything on her plate. I didn’t blame her, her cheeks were gaunt,
and her skin clammy. That psycho path
hadn’t kept his girls fed, and up and down her arm you could see the injections
he forced upon them. I would later get
the full story, how The Doctor had his employ a few good looking twenty
somethings, all of whom were beautiful examples of the male sex and he sent
them out whooing tourist and coeds.
Luring them back to one of The Doctors safe houses were he would be
waiting with a bag full of goodies guaranteed to get them jacked. He’d keep them around injecting them with
heroin until they craved for it and needed it all on their own. Those that wanted to leave were allowed to
but almost all of them came back, suffering withdrawal pains. Prisoners of an addiction that wasn’t even
their own. The track marks on Allison’s
arms told the same story.
At
that dinner I told her, “You know after this, we can get you out of here. You can go back home. To your family.”
She
let her fork slide out of her hand and stared at me with her dry eyes, and
shook her head, “Please don’t.” It was
a look of pure unadeltered terror.
Whatever was waiting for her back home was enough to make her find her
current predicament a better one. I
backed up my words and assured her that she would be safe with me and that she
should stay under my supervision for the time being. If left to her own devices she’d be back with
The Doctor not in a matter of weeks, but days.
It
was a week after she moved in with me that I found her in my bathtub dressed in
that yellow dress. The water was cloudy
red, and the slits on her wrists were huge and done with exact precision. If I had been moments later she would have
been dead, but I saved her. It was
while I sat with her in the hospital that I realized I cared so deeply for her. After she had first awoken from the
sedatives they gave her, she wouldn’t look at me. Not out of being ashamed, but because she
was angry that I had saved her yet again.
It didn’t last, I fell asleep next to her in an ucomfortably padded
hospital chair two nights in a row never once leaving her side, and something
in her changed. I had brought her back
from oblivion, and she had met, ironically, the one good guy in this city. That was before I was watching men choke on
their own blood. Back then I was
sympathetic to the fools, like Allison, who let the bright lights and tall buildings
seduce them. While the claws of men like
The Doctor rose out of rain gutters and gripped their flesh and dragged them
into darkened alleyways to be forgotten.
But Allison was safe now, thanks to me.
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