Smut Central

by Brandon McCalla

  It was close to one in the morning. The local drug dealers were not out hustling. Markus’s hood was deserted. He lived in a small three story building with a liquor store located on the first floor. He hadn’t actually touched his wine during dinner and wanted some. Unfortunately, the liquor store was closed and he did not have anything strong upstairs. Markus let himself inside the apartment and his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID then answered.

  “Agent extraordinaire, what can I do for you?”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere with me Markus Johnson,” Audra snapped.

  “Why are you calling me at this ungodly hour, if not for flattery?” He asked flatly.

  “I got another gig for you. Smut Central Entertainment wants you in their office first thing Monday morning,” she said, hanging the phone up.

  What a bitch, he thought. She had brought him good news. Smut Central wanted him for another gig. He was quite certain he had already been paid for the last movie. Smut Central paid on time and paid exceptionally well. He needed all the money he could make.

  Markus took off his jacket and shirt. He stomped a bold roach crawling on the floor.

  “I gotta get out of this roach infested dump!” He yelled at the flattened pest.

  The place wasn’t entirely a dump, but the neighborhood left much to be desired. He wanted to live in a different location. The freaky time he spent with Gwyneth and Mr. Manners left him with higher aspirations.

  Before he went to sleep he had an overwhelming urge to call the former mystery woman, Michelle. It was way too late and he gave up on the idea realizing he was a complete stranger to her. His thoughts made him feel woozy. Flopping on his bed in jeans and boots, Markus tried thinking of other things. He closed his eyes trying to shut out the woman who kept sending him back to a past he had somehow forgotten.

  Markus dreamt that he was a child no older than nine, in a room full of hundreds of other children. The room was stuffy and cluttered. He could barely move. It was dark and the children were crying. He could hardly hear himself thinking. He felt he should be crying as well but there were no tears.

  There were no windows in the room, but a dim light shone from an opening. It was a doorway and the door wasn’t locked. He was elbow to elbow with so many other children he couldn’t reach the door if he tried. It was the only way out.

  The air was nauseatingly infested with the scent of rotten food, stale urine and feces. Winged insects, possibly flies, were numerous and everywhere, almost apart of the air itself. If you opened your mouth you would take the insects in with the air. They would go all the way down and into your stomach. Markus was sure of it.

  He harbored an overwhelming urge to bite and scratch his way through the bodies but didn’t have the strength. He felt claustrophobic, began panting, everything was moving in and getting closer. He was heaving in gulps of air. All the kids were sucking all the oxygen. The only ventilation was the half-inch crack at the bottom of the door.

  Markus had seen the door once when he was first forced into the room. He felt a rush of the freshest air coming from it directly before it closed. By then he was practically in the middle of the room, surrounded by hundreds of children. He had to get to the door, but couldn’t move an inch.

  He opened his mouth a bit too much and thousands of winged insects went down inside him. He screamed. Flies, they were flies. Hundreds of thousands of flies, all the flies in the room flew into his mouth and down into his stomach.

  Markus heard some of the flies saying things. Most of them were buzzing, speaking unrecognizable phrases, but some he heard clearly.

  They were saying, “This way, he has opened his mouth, now we can escape.” All Markus wanted to do was reach the door. Markus woke drenched in sweat. He looked around the room, looked for the children, looked for the door, the crack under the door, the light.

  “Shit,” he said, wiping some sweat from his forehead. “It was only a weird-ass dream.”

  After some thinking, Markus realized that he never remembered a dream as detailed as he remembered this one. He never even thought about his dreams after he awoke.

  “Strange,” he whispered. “Very fucking strange...” He looked at his alarm clock. “Stranger still, I only slept for a half hour.” He rose and walked over to the window, opened the blinds. “No,” he thought aloud. The light of day made his eyes squint. “It’s the very next day.” He looked at his watch. “Shit!” he exclaimed. “It’s fucking Saturday afternoon.”

  Markus wasn’t ready to except the reality of things. He went to sleep at around one Friday morning. It was Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes past one-thirty. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” He asked himself.

  Lucky for him, there was nothing pending until Monday morning. He had to go to Manhattan to the Smut Central Entertainment office bright and early and he had to see his shrink at six that evening. This whole thing was bizarre. He had never slept that length of a time in his life. Markus called Tanisha.

  “Hello,” she greeted. Once she realized it was Markus she barked. “I was calling you all fucking day yesterday. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “I just got up,” he said, yawning.

  “Fuck today, I’m talking about yesterday.”

  “Stop yelling. I’m serious. I was asleep for over twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s fucking incredible,” she blurted. “Damn,” Tanisha said, calming down. “You serious…?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong with you, yelling at me like you’re my wife or some shit? Where are you?”

  “Don’t ask me where I am, like I’m your wife or some shit. I’m getting my nails did. Afterwards I’m going shopping. Why don’t you join me?” She said in a pleasant tone.

  “Maybe,” he uttered with uncertainty. Tanisha had a strange tone to her voice. She sounded way too nice. “You never asked me to go shopping with you before. What’s the special occasion?” He asked sounding suspicious.

  “The special occasion is I ran out of money,” she said, laughing at her own joke. “Seriously Mark, I was worried about you. I haven’t heard from you all day yesterday. Come meet me at the nail shop, you know where I get my nails done.”

  “It’s gonna take me an hour at least…”

  “Fine,” she interrupted. “I’ll get a pedicure and a massage also, to pass the time. I’ll be here. Hurry...”

  “Right,” Markus tossed his cell phone on the bed.

  He needed to take a very long shower and he needed to clear his head. The dream was very disturbing, and the fact that he had slept for over twenty-four hours was very out of the ordinary.

  12

  Markus took a very long shower. He realized he was outright starving once he got dressed and was putting on his jewelry. He needed a shave. Moving his hand over his head, Markus could feel the early stages of follicles. He glanced at his watch, remembering how impatient Tanisha was. He didn’t want to keep her waiting. The sooner they met, the sooner he could get something to eat.

  Feeling hungry, Markus jogged down the stairs, and walked out the front door of the building. It was sunny. He left a pair of shades in the car. He was going to put them on. He wore a light spring jacket but didn’t need it. It was a beautiful day. He felt like jogging to his car, but strolled up the block instead. Some dude was sitting on the hood of the Lexus. He wanted to yell at dude, but recognized the guy by what he was wearing, and kept his cool. It was Sparks, a friend.

  Sparks usually wore a white tee shirt, a fitted hat of some sort; rocking colors that would match whatever Nike sneakers he decided to wear. Today he had on gray and white fitted from a Negro league team and gray, blue and orange Air Max.

  Sparks saw how Markus focused on his sneaks and said, “I’m wearing these for the first time and the last. You’ll never see me wear these shits again this year. Nike is running out of things for me to purchase. I might have to switch brands or walk around barefooted.”

  Before Markus could say, get off the h
ood of my car, Sparks raised one of his hands dramatically, and pointed a finger down. Markus followed the finger until he saw where it ended.

  “What the fuck…!” Markus said walking around his car, looking at the tires. All of his tires were flat, someone had slashed his tires!

  “They got you good, nigga.”

  “Who got me?” Markus questioned with anger.

  “Probably the nigga’s you were hanging out with the other night, that’s who,” Sparks laughed. “Hate is all around us young Jedi. Jealousy, envy, shit nigga, the way you floss round here with all the platinum and diamonds… This Lexus and all your talk about the bitches you fuck in the movies…”

  “Sparks, I don’t brag,” Markus said softly.

  “You don’t have to brag. Just walking around this hood where niggas be seeing and knowing, is enough. You need to keep a lower profile, my man,” Sparks said, fumbling in his pocket. “Get a Dutch Master or something,” he continued, producing a nice, meaty bag of green marijuana.

  Sparks began dangling the bag in Markus’s face like a carrot. He was the neighborhood drug dealer and Markus was the horse. Markus didn’t feel like smoking weed. The tires on his Lexus had been slashed, and he wanted to know who did it. In the past, he never had any sort of situation or problems in his hood. He mentally vowed to have problems with whoever slashed his tires.

  He walked across the street, went inside the corner store, and bought a cigar. Markus was a casual user and gave the cigar to Sparks. Unraveling the Dutch, Sparks was soon rolling. Then he lit the nice sized blunt.

  “It was probably that nigga, Cali. He’s always talking cross about you,” Sparks said between pulls. He passed the blunt to Markus.

  “Cali,” Markus uttered the name, inhaled weed and continued. “I don’t have any problems with Cali.”

  “He gotta problem with you. Didn’t he used to fuck with that stripper bitch? What’s the bitch’s name, Tanisha?” Sparks asked.

  “No way,” Markus said, passing the blunt, and pausing for a beat. “Damn… Well I think he did something in the VIP room with her when she was going down that route. If you get my meaning…?”

  “Going down that route…? Nigga, you fuck bitches on film for money, and you say shit like going down that route? When a bitch is turning tricks…?” Sparks let out a loud laugh with the smoke. He laughed so hard he almost dropped the blunt during the exchange.

  “True,” he mumbled. “She doesn’t do that type of stuff anymore.”

  “Not that you know of,” he said, correcting Markus. “Fuck her. This ain’t about how many dicks she sucks at the club. A nigga like Cali can hold a grudge against you for some petty shit like this though. We all know you be over her crib slaying that on the regular. Maybe he tried to get another blowjob and she told him to be easy. That’s all it takes.”

  “This shit is dumb,” Markus blurted.

  “Dumb or not, look at your tires. Aren’t those Pirellis?” He questioned, looking at Markus’s deflated tires. “Here,” he said, passing the blunt.

  “Yep,” Markus confirmed. “Slashing tires is some real bitch shit. Only women do shit like that.”

  “Needless to say, I think it was him. Weren’t you hanging with Cali the other night?” Sparks asked, snatching the blunt from Markus.

  “Hmm, hmm, I was,” Markus slowly nodded.

  “There you go. You probably mentioned Tanisha, right?”

  “Shit! I gotta meet Tanisha now. Damn! I gotta get these flats fixed.”

  Markus watched as Sparks broke out in another hearty fit of laughter. Sparks sucked on the roach before speaking.

  “Nigga, you need new tires. You can’t patch those. Where you gotta go, my car is around the block?”

  Markus thanked Sparks for the ride but he knew his friend wanted to tag along for more than doing him a favor. He was sure Sparks would make moves on Tanisha. In the hood, friends weren’t below trying to get some pussy anyway they could. Tanisha wasn’t a whore, at least not anymore. But who knows what Sparks thought in that criminal brain of his. Markus took another look at his tires. He needed a ride. Sparks was the closest thing to a ride at the present moment.

  Markus gave Sparks the directions to the nail shop. It was in the East Village in Manhattan, a place Sparks rarely ventured. Sparks called himself a businessman. He was well respected in the hood. Markus smoked weed. If it weren’t for local drug dealers like Sparks, he wondered how he would acquire the illegal narcotic.

  Markus was very high. He wasn’t sure what sort of weed they smoked, but that shit was potent. They finished off another blunt in the car. Once they reached Manhattan, Sparks was looking for a store to purchase another cigar.

  “Why don’t you buy a box of cigars?” Markus asked.

  “Man, I like my cigars fresh.”

  Sparks was a very interesting dude, Markus decided as they walked into the nail parlor. He saw Tanisha sitting in the waiting area with her head inside a Cosmopolitan magazine. Markus hailed her. She acknowledged him with a smile. When she saw who was with him she frowned at Sparks.

  “What the fuck is he doing with you?” She asked as they walked out the nail parlor.

  Sparks was a few steps ahead of them. He was dumping the contents of a Dutch Master cigar, leaving a trail for them to follow like bread crumbs.

  “I needed a ride. Cali slashed my tires,” Markus told her.

  “Cali…?” she gasped.

  “Yeah Cali,” he said, eyeing Tanisha with suspicion.

  She was never short on words, but this time she had nothing to say. Markus wasn’t sure why and he decided to change the subject.

  “You said you wanted to go shopping. Where…? In the East Village…?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “You said you slept for over twenty-four hours. How crazy is that?”

  “I don’t know how crazy. I guess I better discuss this with my shrink on Monday.”

  “Did you call Michelle yet?” She asked changing the conversation’s direction.

  “Nope,” he said with simplicity.

  “You scared?” She asked.

  Markus didn’t answer. Sparks was about to light the blunt but Tanisha said, “Jerk, you gonna get arrested! This is not the hood. You can’t just smoke drugs out in the open.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Sparks said, smiling at her.

  “No you won’t,” Tanisha said sternly.

  She held her hand out, and Sparks reluctantly handed her the blunt.

  “This is appalling,” Sparks barked as Tanisha and Markus broke out in raucous laughter.

  13

  After a couple of hours of walking around, Markus knew Tanisha didn’t truly want to go shopping. First, they walked two blocks from the nail parlor and got something to eat at BBQ’s. Markus was starving; he ravaged his meal in silence while Sparks and Tanisha chit chatted about various issues and topics.

  At first Markus was jealous, listening to Tanisha and Sparks. They seemed to hit it off and were interested in the same sort of stuff. Markus thought he was the only one who could make Tanisha laugh to the point where her stomach ached, he wasn’t. Sparks proved to be quite an interesting dude.

  They had consumed more than enough alcohol by the time they left BBQ’s. Trudging through the busy sidewalks of NYC, they readily followed Tanisha to wherever she wanted to shop. All she did was window shop.

  Sparks was glad she didn’t do more. He would have never done this with any female, including all of his babies’ mothers. He was about ready to leave Markus and Tanisha’s fat ass right there in the East Village. Tanisha looked at her watch and said, “I gotta meet a few of the girls at six in a lounge down in SOHO.”

  Sparks said, “What the fuck is a SOHO?”

  She said, “Sparks, you don’t get out much do you?”

  “Only to go see my parole officer,” Sparks deadpanned.

  Markus laughed at what Sparks said. He knew Sparks had never been arrested in his life. A lot of dudes in the hood only l
eft the hood for that particular reason.

  “South of Houston Street,” Tanisha explained. “It’s another part of the Village. The lounge is mad cool. You’ll be able to smoke your weed. They have an open area in the back with trees and benches. People go there to drink, smoke and listen to music.”

  “Sounds very entertaining,” Sparks replied. “Are your friends white?”

  Tanisha said, “You’ll see.”

  “Are they from the job?” Markus asked.

  Tanisha said, “You’ll see.”

  Stepping inside the lounge, they went straight toward the back. It led outside, where there were trees and benches. A group of white people were over in a far corner talking, laughing, drinking, smoking cigarettes, and weed. Sparks inhaled and then smiled, welcoming the aroma.

  He held out his hand in Tanisha’s direction. She paused, giving him a queer look. Tanisha smiled, went in her purse, and handed the blunt to him. It was crooked. He scrutinized it for a beat then straightened it out and sparked the ganja.

  “My friends are over there, I see them.” She pointed.

  Markus immediately saw the flawless specimen that presented him with glimpses of his past. She was the woman who made him black out every time he laid eyes on her. Saturday evening wasn’t any different from any other day. There was Michelle. Markus began feeling lightheaded. He could hear Tanisha saying, “No, not again, Markus!”

  “What the fuck is going on?” Sparks shouted while reaching out and grabbing Markus by the shoulder.

  Sparks’s fast reflexes prevented Markus from hitting the ground but he was loosing his hold on him. Sparks however lost his grip on the blunt he was smoking. Sparks had less than a second to decide whether to get a firmer grip on Markus or catch his blunt before it hit the ground…

  When Markus woke from his blackout Saturday night at the lounge, Michelle was nowhere to be seen. She left as soon as he hit the ground. One of her friends, a woman named Kendra stayed. She knew who Markus was, he was Mr. Excitement. She was so humored by the whole situation, her best friend Michelle was sending the super porn star unconscious with a look. Kendra laughed at Michelle when Markus hit the floor and pointed at her and said, “Medusa. This is like that except no turning to stone. Zap!”