Quandary 12

The dream was vivid. It was a version of me I hadn’t seen in too many years. There was a genuine smile on my face because I was surrounded by family and friends. I don’t ever have conversations in my dreams that I can remember so all I can recall is sitting in a room greeting people, some of whom I didn’t remember, but whom I had known before the drugs. There was persistent babble all around and it sounded like we were under water, but nobody was talking. Then I pulled out a meth pipe and started smoking it and everybody started to dwindle away. They weren’t mad at me, I could see them smiling as they faded into the black, but very quickly I was alone. The last person to leave was my mom. She was walking away and she turned back to look at me. She was still smiling at me when she turned into nothing.

I lay in the bed for a few minutes trying to analyze what happened in my dream. My alarm had gone off and I was fortunate enough to have had enough sleep to wake in a state of awareness. The thing I really cared about in the dream was my pipe which I reached under the pillow for. The only time the drug really had any effect on me was after a decent slumber, and a few hits made me tingle. I sat up in the bed and judged my surroundings. I saw my giant bag of crystalized methamphetamine sitting out in the open at the foot of the bed which was cause for concern. I’m not positive the manager poked his head in at some point, but I decided it was time for an early check-out.

The only things I ever made sure I had when I performed the evacuation procedure at a hotel were felonies which included my phone, drugs, and all paraphernalia to include scales, pipes, and the glass turntable from the microwave. I didn’t actually take the turntable, I just washed it off because I didn’t want to be responsible for an accidental poisoning. I opened up the door to darkness. It would prove to be another clean getaway for Vinnie the meth dealer.

I hit the road, this time with a buzz that would keep me awake for a few hours. I grabbed my fully charged phone and dialed the only number I knew by heart. It rang only once and was answered by a cheerful voice, “What the fuck do you want?” I replied to Seth, “Your sweet arse.” Silence. I continued, “We need to meet up. I have some ideas on how to deal with my little problem.” He sounded excited, “I assume you mean we get to kill them?” I let out a sinister laugh, “You’re God damned right we do!”

About 45 minutes later I pulled into Seth’s driveway in Fountain. I had lived in this town many years before and I always enjoyed reminiscing as I drove through. There was the Broken Hammer Bar and Grill that I had worked at for a number of years, the place I had met Crystal. There was the grocery store where I would buy the only bacon that I ever became addicted to. And there was the apartment above the pizza place where my life as a criminal began again many years ago. As I drove by I saw a camera I had mounted to the roof in a state of paranoia years ago. That camera had night vision which is how I saw the camera the police had mounted and faced toward my apartment a block down, the reason I left the town for good.

Seth’s house looked like everybody else’s house in the neighborhood except for the lawn décor. He had a number of used vehicles for sale in his driveway and on his lawn. To my knowledge, he had never sold one, but he was always working on them. I got out of my car and found him under the hood of an old Corolla. “Let’s go inside, we’ve got work to do.” He closed the hood and we headed inside.

The inside of his house was immaculate, and you could probably eat off of the floor if you ever decided to eat. We sat on his couch and suddenly a dog was in my lap and licking my face. It was if she appeared from thin air. I tried speaking through the K-9 assault, “Setrh, I nbeed a pristol.” I succumbed to the affection of the dog and rolled her over on her belly and gave her a good scratching. I repeated, “Seth, I need a gun.” He pulled a large caliber revolver from his waistband and handed it to me.

Quandary 10

This is the tenth in a fictional series of posts that starts here.

I parked in my usual spot less than twelve hours since my previous arrival. Mason and I had a predetermined amount of cash that would prompt the phone call for my visit, and I was well over the line. There was nothing I could do to hide the bruising, and I hadn’t spent any time coming up with a story to explain it and there was no time left. I knocked on the door.

He opened it up and pulled me inside with brute force. He slammed the door shut and pushed me up against the wall, grabbing me by my throat. “What the fuck is wrong with you coming here like this!?” I replied with a lie, “I got into a fight man, it happens!” Quizzically he looked me up and down, “That’s it?” I nodded. I felt his grasp loosen and finally he let go of me. I wondered if I had made a stool in my pants. Mason said with tension in his voice, “Shit man you scared me, I thought you were gonna tell me you got robbed or something. I’m sorry, people are fuckin’ me over left and right lately, I should have known you were good.” More like amazing, I thought. “You look like shit though. You get in a fight with a girl again?” He beamed, I returned the gesture less proportionately and retorted, “Yup. You should see her, not a scratch.” I laughed at my shot at comedy.

I pulled a well-organized wad of folded money out of my pocket. He liked how I always faced my money, and how the number I gave him always matched what was actually there. He always counted it anyhow, it wasn’t a sign of disrespect, it was customary in the drug trade when dealing with any number over $100.

While he was counting the money, I was recounting the evening in my head. What the fuck was I going to do? I had been threatened, beaten, tossed around, and put in a trunk. Twice. My mind was full of half ideas, fractured thoughts, and vengeful plans. None of those would get me out of this mess. There was only one way out. Murder.

And just as my head rolled back in the same direction as my eyes, the burn phone in my pocket that Driver had given me vibrated. It scared me and my whole body jolted awake. Mason could hear the vibrating but it was expected that I wouldn’t answer the phone while I was there so I let it keep going. Silence. I really had to answer that phone, but I couldn’t. Why would they be calling already? I just wanted to sleep. I got up to use the bathroom and when I shut the door behind me I reached into my 5^th pocket and grabbed the last meth-filled capsule and washed it down with a handful of warm tap water. I stood and gazed at the man in the mirror. He was sweating and his eyes were a solar eclipse; two giant black marbles circumferenced by two bright white rings. I realized at that moment why sunglasses were really invented.  He had been through a rough twelve hours, and the pressure would not be relieved anytime soon. The only thing he could not do was fall asleep.

I went back out to the living room to find Mason weighing out a bag for somebody I had never seen before. It was a small bag so I assumed it was nobody of importance. We greeted each other with a simple bow of the head. I sat there patiently and I felt the phone begin to vibrate again. Shit. I looked at Mason and asked with a gesture of the thumb if I could leave and he gave me the thumbs up. I stood and exited his house and reached into my pocket for the phone.

It was Dumpy. “Why didn’t you answer yer fuckin’ phone?” I cringed at the sound of his voice. “I was busy, what do you want?” He spoke very clearly, “We're at your hotel room. We need to talk.” Fuck.

Quandary 9

I made the call. I told my guy, I’ll call him Mason Doty which is completely made up, that I was in the neighborhood and could see him if it was necessary. That was simple code for me having enough money to make it worth me stopping by his house. “Yeah, come on over, man.” He said in a raspy voice. I would imagine that at 7am I had woken him up. Funny thing about money, it has a way of making people not care about the little things in life. I told him I would be there in ten minutes.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. My face was a mess; bruises on the front, side, and I’m sure the back of my head. I ran my hand through my hair and still felt the moisture on my scalp from my shower. There was no point in trying to hide anything now, I thought. He’s gonna be pissed at me, but he probably won’t kill me.

There was another reason he trusted me, about six months ago he made me help him bury a body. It’s not exactly what I had in mind for that night, but it’s what I had to do to stay alive.

I was at his house to pick up when there was a knock at the door. Mason looked surprised and looked at me as if I knew who it could be. “Who the fuck is here?” I shrugged. We both knew it wasn’t the C.O.P.’s. They have a way of being very sneaky, and then very loud when they come into your house, I had seen that before, too, but that’s another story.

Mason stood and went to the door, “Who’s there?” his voice was tense. “It’s Ryan, I need to talk.” Mason mouthed a word that I couldn’t make it out, it kind of sounded like bocksucker. He unbolted the door and let in the new guest. Ryan appeared around the corner and I could tell he had had a rough day. I didn’t really know him but for what Mason had told me about him which was very little except for that he had a bit of a gambling problem and he really liked to get high. Mason shouted, “What the fuck are you doing here without calling?” Ryan replied, “I lost my phone. I lost everything.” Ryan started crying and told a cheap story about being robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of Walmart. Even I didn’t buy it. Without warning, Mason flew into a fit of rage and began pummeling him in the face until he hit the floor at which point he got on top of him and started to choke him. And he just wouldn’t stop. There was a little struggle but I saw the lights go out almost immediately; the blood to his brain was cut off and it shut down his body in sort of a survival mode. Of course the brain knows it’s dying, it just has a really stupid way of telling the rest of the body.

There was no last breath until finally Mason let go. Then sort of a gargled wheezing escaped from his chest, and his head tilted toward the floor. What I didn’t expect was his eyes flying open and his tongue slowly start to stick out at the same moment he released his bowels into his pants. It was comical, and I couldn’t help but laugh at him and the situation. “He shit his pants!” Mason looked at me and I got the feeling that he wasn’t a first timer. It also wasn’t the first murder I had witnessed, and Mason knew that so I think that may have helped me survive.

I was defenseless against the weaponry he had at his disposal in his home. He quickly got up and grabbed a knife from under his mattress and came toward me. He grabbed my collar and looked in my eyes and said, “Give me your hand.” Fuck. I knew I was going to get cut, but I knew I wasn’t going to die. He made a deep gash in the palm of my hand, not too deep for stitches, but deep enough for a good release of D.N.A. He then told me I had to stab Ryan’s body a few times. He knew he didn’t need to get any of his guns out to make me comply. I used the handle of the knife in my hand to stop the bleeding as best I could, and I got up and positioned myself over the lifeless body. I gave it all I had. One, two, three times I stabbed deeply into the corpse. There was still enough pressure in the body to allow for bleeding, and soon there was a terrible mess before me. I thought it was odd how easily the human body could be penetrated, and I wondered if I was capable of doing this to a living person. I turned around to find Mason standing there with a tarp. “We need to get him in your trunk while we can still fold him.” It made sense to me.

I was covered in blood but it was dark out, and I had to run through the alley to get my car and park it out back of his house so we could drag the body out. I backed in and shut off the lights. We made the trip with relative ease and I took off my shirt and threw it in the trunk. I took a quick shower in his house and he gave me a fresh set of clothes before we headed out to the darkness surrounding Rochester.

We spent three hours digging a deep grave for the now stiff body. My hand was a bloody, blistered mess and would need medical attention but never receive it. In with the body went the knife and my bloody shirt: incentive. I would never tell the cops anyhow, but I’m sure Mason felt better about me being alive, and that’s what mattered. It took another two hours of filling in the hole and carefully landscaping the area over the former pit to make us comfortable enough to leave. The car ride back to his house was a quiet one, not even the radio could clear our minds of what we had just done.

I had that murder in my mind every time I went over to Mason’s house and this would be no different. The big exception being that I never came over with excuses, only money. He might be upset that I was in bad shape, but $9,000 in my pocket said he would laugh it off. I was wrong.