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.

Quandary 6

With a fresh buzz and a new motel room to do business, I made the usual calls. I always liked how people answered the phone so quickly for me. Usually one ring followed by an excited greeting. I never gave any specifics over the phone other than a location, business could be discussed in person.

A few of my regulars came and went, all of them looked suspiciously at my fresh wounds, probably because I still hadn't bothered to clean myself up yet, but it didn't interrupt their routine and they quickly went about their business. About an hour after my last runner left, there was a knock at my door. I felt some relief for the first time in a while. Seth had arrived.

I had known Seth for most of my life. We were best friends and accomplices in nearly every crime we had ever committed. He was an ally that I would need in the weeks to come.

I opened the door. His gaunt figure slouched in the doorway, his form a silhouette outlined by the red glow of a high-pressure sodium lamp in the parking lot. He had been through a lot in his own life, just like me. We had been selling and doing meth for over a decade, and our battle wounds were plentiful, his in particular.

A few years back I got a shipment of particularly strong, old-school biker crank. This shit could wake up a corpse and keep it moving for a week. Seth liked to take things apart and he was the first to get his hands on the stuff and he spent four straight days in the dead of winter disassembling and reassembling the engine of an old Chevy truck. Halfway through the second day, he had lost all feeling in his extremities and by the end of the process had lost all ten of his fingertips to frostbite. He never went to the hospital so the ends sort of just shriveled up and withered away. Even as his best friend I had trouble looking at his hands, ten purple nubs that hung off of the second knuckles. He always had his fists clenched when he walked or was around people he didn't know as to avoid attention, but I always saw them when we got high together; his mangled fingers carefully turning the pipe back and forth.

Seth had no fear of any person or thing, and I always knew that no matter what, he had my back. He looked up at my face and said, "What's his address?" I knew that if I had known the location of my assailants and given it to him, they would all have trouble walking, possibly for the rest of their lives. "It was your mom." We smiled at that and I let him in.

I could now see him in the light. His short blonde hair looked like it had been washed in oil a week ago. I asked, "Been taking motors apart again?" He raised his deformed middle finger in my direction, he knew that would shut me up. Seth made his living as a drug dealer as well. Unlike me, he had his own house in a small town south of Rochester. He never did business there because the locals would surely notice any irregular traffic or odd hours. "I haven't been home for a week. I've been out making you money." He pulled a mangled  wad of bills from his front pants pocket and threw it on the bed. I looked at him, and I knew he would be instrumental at getting me out if this jam. I decided to tell him everything.

This is how I remember Seth. He liked to play with his cigarette smoke, carefully twirling it out of his mouth while he was thinking.

We spent two hours getting high and talking about what had happened so far that night. The first blue light of morning crept through the drawn shades as the birds began their morning songs, and something popped into my head.

"Holy fuck!" I shouted in disbelief. I rifled through my empty pockets and looked around for my phone. It hadn't been shut off during the ordeal, and that could be a huge mistake for Dumpy, Goggles, and Driver. I found my LG on top of the microwave and tapped the screen a few times. I waited patiently for the information I wanted to fill my display. And there it was.


"Seth, you aren't gonna believe this. I know where this guy lives." Google location history had finally served a purpose.

Quandary 3

Darkness, the recurring theme of this traumatic evening. I’d had a gun and a knife pointed at me, I’d been hit in the head with an unknown weapon, and I’d been tied up and thrown in a trunk. I had also been drugged but that was of my own choosing so that didn’t count. The meth coursing through my system was probably the only reason I wasn’t sleeping soundly during the ride to terminus mysterious.

At least it wasn’t a bumpy ride, I mean as far as trunks go, this one was quite roomy. The three shovels had me concerned, I mean where the hell would we be going that they would have enough time to dig a fucking grave, we’re in Rochester, MN not the fucking desert. And why would they kill me? Maybe this was just a scare tactic; something to make it look like they were serious. I believed them.

We drove for twenty minutes or so at highway speed and started to slow down. I had done enough drug dealing and driving to recognize that we were probably in one of the smaller towns surrounding the big city. There was a series of turns followed by a gradual incline of what I assumed was a driveway. A bump. Another. Then the car shifted gears to park and the engine was turned off. I heard the distinct noise of an automatic garage door being shut, followed by some muffled words. They were probably saying something about letting me go with all of my belongings and forgetting the whole thing. Or something like that.

The trunk opened and I was expecting a gun or a grenade or a packet of anthrax to be thrust in my face, but it was just Dumpy, this time with a shirt. I thought it was funny how he looked like a computer programmer now versus a gun-toting racist just a short while ago. It’s amazing what a little cotton can do. Dumpy said, “Alright, you can get out.” He offered no assistance and I had a difficult time with my hands tied behind my back. Everything seemed to get in the way of every part of my body trying to maneuver myself out of the cargo hold, but I finally made my way out. He turned me and pushed me toward a door that lead into a house.

It was just a regular house. Actually it was a really big, beautiful, modern home. The only things that seemed off were the closed blinds and a tied-up, naked, bleeding man now standing in the kitchen. Dumpy untied my wrists and motioned toward the sink before saying, “You can clean yourself up a little. If you make any attempt to escape, you will regret it.” Fair enough. I nodded and grabbed a few paper towels and tried to soak up the blood on my head but it had already dried. Add water, repeat.

I looked around for an obvious escape route just in case some miracle occurred and I found an opportune moment, but all I saw was Goggles looking at me. He cocked his head, “Don’t even think about it. You’ll never make it out of here. Come put your clothes on and have a seat.” I obliged, as if I had a choice.

I dressed myself which I do almost every day. I felt around for my wallet, a pound of meth, but they were nowhere to be found. I heard a light thud on the coffee table in the center of the room. “Hey! There’s my meth!” I try to have a sense of humor everywhere I go. For the first time the driver spoke, “For now, let’s call it “our” meth.” He smiled and pointed to a chair in which I believed he wanted me to sit.

Driver was a pretty normal looking guy compared to the other two. Goggles, as it turned out was a fairly dainty little man with rotten teeth and a crooked smile that framed them perfectly. He wore a tattered wife-beater and had veiny sinuous muscles that flexed frantically with his every sudden jerky move. His eyed darted around constantly and one of his eyes seemed to always be catching up to the other. Driver on the other hand appeared to be well groomed. If I had to guess, which I did, I would say that this was his house, and his family was gone for the night, probably in some hotel while business was attended to. His hair was neatly coiffed, skin toned, and he wore a shirt with no holes or dirt. He also had all of his teeth.

Driver recited his words internally before speaking, “First I want you to know that we have no problem with you. We actually chose you because you are known for being a little bolder than some of the tweakers out there-- a risk-taker. Sorry about the head, Mike can get a little carried away when he gets a kidnapping job.” Mike was surely an alias for Goggles. Driver continued, “We didn’t put you through all of this for a pound of meth. Actually, we have no intention of taking anything from you at all. If you are cooperative, and we believe that you will follow the instructions we give you tonight, you will get to leave with everything you had on you when you left King’s place. I’ll get right to the point; we need you to steal your boss’s supply money.” They wanted me to steal from the most dangerous man I had ever met before tonight. And it looked like I didn’t have a choice.

Okay, folks….. Here’s the scoop. This and the previous two posts have been entirely a work of fiction created by me. I wanted to give it a shot since I had never tried anything like it. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I felt like I could have gone on and on. I would really like to hear from you and what you thought about it. Did I put you there with me? Did it seem like it could have been real based on what I had written so far? Did I go too far? Did you catch on that I was making this up? Please, I welcome all comments. Also, would you keep reading it if I kept going, now knowing that it’s all fantasy?

Thanks for reading!