Snow White: A Survival Story

by Anna J.

  “Khalid, stop playing before that thing goes off. Put it up,” I pleaded from my position across the room. I’d seen on the news too many times how some unsuspecting child was killed from playing with a gun, and I wasn’t ready to go just yet.

  “It’s not even loaded. See,” he said, walking toward me. Just then, the door opened and Ms. Shanyce, Khalid’s mom, was standing in the doorway, holding a plate of fresh-baked cookies.

  “Boy, what are you doing with that? Where did you get a gun from?”

  Ms. Shanyce rushed into the room, snatching the gun from Khalid’s hands, dropping the plate of cookies in the process. She was shaking and crying, and I understood, because I was scared myself as I tried to hide on the other side of the bed just in case it went off.

  She snapped for a quick second, cursing up a storm and bringing us into the living room. She sat us down and asked Khalid a million times where the gun had come from. He told her he found it, but I knew he was just protecting his dad. He didn’t mention the other stuff he had in the closet, either, and I didn’t say a word. I just sat back and tried not to cry, because I knew that Khalid had messed up and I wouldn’t be able to see him for a while except for when we were in school.

  She was still going off after she walked away, consistently dialing Khalid’s dad and getting his voice mail. She was cursing him out, leaving message after message, telling him he needed to get home. Khalid just sat with his hands folded tightly in his lap, never taking his gaze away from the floor. I wanted to hold him and tell him it would be cool, but I knew it wouldn’t be. Mr. Joey would be in trouble as well, and I just hoped that didn’t trickle down to me.

  After what seemed like forever, Ms. Shanyce instructed me to get my coat on so that she could walk me home. Khalid had to come too, because there wasn’t anyone there to watch him, but the entire time we walked, she was cursing him out and promising an ass whipping when they got back. We normally held hands when we walked, but today we had to walk on either side of his mom, and I missed him already. I still had my first real kiss, though, and I held on to that as we made the trip around the corner.

  I went up the steps, and she watched until I closed the door. I could still hear her cursing Khalid out as they walked away. I ran up the steps and looked out the window, hoping he would glance back once more, but by the time I got upstairs, I could see them turning the corner.

  After taking care of my mom and looking over my homework once more, I went ahead and called it a night. I would find out what happened with Khalid at school tomorrow, but tonight, I had my kiss. I didn’t have to deal with Vince tonight, either, so that just made it even sweeter.

  Vincent Clayton

  Snitches Dig Ditches

  “Yo, what’s all this about?” Joey asked with fear in his eyes. I knew this nigga was pussy, but my plan was to shake that shit out of his ass today. Real killers don’t give a fuck, and he needed to learn how to take the emotion out of it. We was going to make him our ditch man, if he could just get his head on straight. He would hesitate to pull a trigger, but when it came to covering his tracks, he never left footprints. “This here is a snitch nigga, and a thief on top of that. Ain’t that right, Sanchez?” I said, speaking to Shanyce’s brother. His name wasn’t really Sanchez; we just called him that because he looked like he could be Puerto Rican or Dominican. We fucked him up real nice, and with the combination of dope we fed his ass, he couldn’t lift his head from his chest even if he tried.

  It was time to dead that nigga. We let him slide a little when he didn’t follow directions with stealing the pack from Joey, but this dude just kept doing stupid shit, like taking money off the top, even though we paid him good to set niggas up for us. We were hooking him up with supply when he did shit for us, on top of what he copped, and he was still acting a fool.

  “Well, what this got to do with me?” Joey was shaking at this point, and it made me wonder how he managed to get six bodies under him if he couldn’t even get his heart straight.

  “You tryin’a earn more stripes, right? You ready to step the game up?” I asked him while I sparked up another Dutch. I was prepared to give him a lead position if he acted right, but he wasn’t ready for lieutenant status just yet. He still didn’t have enough heart, and we needed to fix that situation with Bunz immediately.

  “Yeah, nigga, but damn. He family.”

  “And what does that mean to you?”

  The situation got intense immediately, because he knew he wasn’t going to be able to back out or it would be his head next. I didn’t have a problem passing Sanchez the gun to dead this nigga. That just meant that Sanchez got to live for a few more hours.

  Moving my attention from him to my hip, I felt my phone vibrate against my side. Taking a quick peek, I saw that it was Shanyce calling. That was cool, because I planned to stop by there anyway.

  “So, what’s it gonna be, nigga? You disposing this body today or what?” Bird asked him as he paced back and forth. Bird didn’t have a lot of patience when it came to bullshit, and if it was up to him, Sanchez would have been deaded last night when we first brought that nigga here, instead of waiting on Street to show up.

  “Gimme the gwap.”

  I gave Street a brand new nine and stepped outside of the room. I didn’t need to witness the shit; I just needed it to go down.

  Taking a seat in front of the TV, I noticed that Street’s phone was vibrating on the table. Picking it up, I noticed it was Shanyce calling again. Some shit must have gone down for her to be calling both of us, because she barely called my phone, except when she was looking for Joey or to confirm when I was coming through for that payback. A small part of me thought she enjoyed the dick-down even though she tried to act like she ain’t want to give it to me. Just thinking about that shit made my dick hard.

  “Yo, y’all niggas handle this. I’ll check in with y’all later on.” I peeked into the room before I left. Joey’s ass was still standing there with the gun, and Bird and Choice was leaning against the windowsill, waiting for this simple nigga to make a move. I knew he would be in there for a good while, so I decided to slide on over to see Shanyce about some shit.

  Street lived within walking distance, so I left my Jeep parked in front of Choice’s crib and let my feet carry me around the block. My watch read six, which was about right, because Street’s simple ass didn’t show up until damn near four o’clock. I wondered briefly if my niece had made it home yet, because I knew she studied with Street’s son. I didn’t need her to be there when I got there, but that was a chance I was willing to take.

  I had turned Joey’s phone off before I left because I needed him to concentrate on getting rid of that body. Whatever Shanyce wanted could wait until he was done handling his business, since it was too early to be moving a body out anyway. It was dark outside at this time of day, true that, but it would be too many witnesses, and we didn’t need that nigga getting caught up in no rush hour traffic or some bullshit like that.

  I knocked on the door a few minutes later, and I could hear Shanyce going off on somebody on the phone. I knew it wasn’t Street because neither Bird nor Choice would be letting that nigga use the phone until this time tomorrow. When she answered the door, she was surprised to see me, of course, and ended her call immediately. It was probably her nosey-ass sister, Rita. I would bang that bitch, too, if she let me.

  “What you doing here, Vince? And where is Joey? Why he not answering his phone?” she said as she stood in the doorway acting like she wasn’t going to let me in.

  “I got him handling something for me. He’ll be here before the sun comes up.”

  “Well, I need him to handle a situation with his son now.”

  “He’ll be here, but as of right now, I need you to handle a situation.”

  “I just told you I’m having a situation with my son,” she said with way too much attitude, while making the space between her and the door smaller.

  “As if today ain’t payback. Is Joey here right no
w to handle it?” I asked while I walked up the steps to stand in the doorway with her.

  “No, he’s not, but—”

  “Then you need to be sucking my dick then.”

  She looked defeated as she took the opportunity to look both ways down the street before letting me in. I didn’t give a fuck who saw me go inside because on some real shit, half the neighborhood knew what Street’s bedroom looked like. That’s what you get when you try to turn a whore into a housewife. She just happened to get knocked on Street, and that’s how it went down. Shit, I remember back in the day when we was young boys playing “catch a girl, get a girl” and we ran trains on her ass every Friday. Southwest niggas been beating that pussy up for years.

  She walked ahead of me, and on the way up, she went toward her son’s room. I walked straight to the bedroom, since I knew where it was, and stripped down to my socks before I sprawled out on their plush-ass comforter. She had candles and shit all over the place, and just thinking about the shit she did with her mouth had my dick pointing to the ceiling. I knew she was checking on her seed, and I needed her to hurry that shit up so I could get back on my grind.

  When she finally came into the room, she slammed the door shut and locked it. I ain’t give a fuck; I was too busy stroking my dick to think about the shit. I just needed her to get her jaw working so I could bust this nut. I did chance a look at her while she was getting undressed, and I have to admit that Shanyce was still the shit, even after carrying Khalid.

  She had a nice heart-shaped ass that might have had Beyonc é jealous if she wasn’t Beyoncé. Her breasts still sat up perky, and her nipples looked like dark chocolate kisses. She climbed on the edge of the bed and crawled toward me with a sexy scowl on her face that let me know that, true, she was mad at me, but she missed the dick.

  “Yeah, you missed Big Daddy, didn’t you?” I asked her as she replaced my hand with her mouth and deep-throated me down to my balls. Shanyce was the truth, because although I didn’t have a yard, I had a smooth ten that had circumference like a muthafucka. She took that shit like her last name was Hoover, and had me gritting my damn teeth and curling my toes, trying to hold this nut down.

  Watching Shanyce’s ass rock back and forth had me hypnotized, and I had to get my head on straight before I crashed it. This bitch was like a snake charmer, and I was a python swaying back and forth to her rhythm. I love a sloppy blowjob, and the sound of her slurping my balls and licking the vein on the underside of my dick had me on tilt for real.

  I pumped her face a few more times before I gently pulled my dick from her mouth and pulled her on top of me. I wasn’t worrying about a damn condom because she lived at the clinic, and my cousin Tisha that worked there always made sure I got her test results. Her pussy felt extra warm as she slid down on me, and for someone who had an attitude with me, her pussy was awfully wet.

  “Damn, girl, this shit is right,” I said to her as I held her by her small waist and pounded up into her. Her titties bounced around freely, and I was enjoying the view. She leaned forward, slowing me down, and grinded her pussy down on my dick in a hard, slow grind that had my eyes positioned on the back of my head immediately. Damn, she was going for broke on this one.

  She was doing the damn thing to me, kissing on the side of my neck and sucking my lips into her mouth like she loved me and shit. She hand-fed me her nipples while she bounced on me, and I was so close to cumming inside of her I was about to lose it. When she leaned back, she bounced on me real hard and placed her hand around the base of my dick, stroking me while she fucked me. That shit blew my mind because that was a technique I only saw porn stars do.

  “Damn, bitch, I’m about to cum,” I said to her in a strained voice as my cum threatened to shoot to the top of my dick and spit out of the head.

  She worked her stroke faster until the very last second, when she hopped off of me and used her mouth to create a seal around the head of my dick. She sucked the cum from my dick like she was siphoning air from an oxygen tank. I blasted off in her mouth so hard my body raised up off the bed a little bit, and it felt like my heart stopped for a second. She continued to milk my dick until I couldn’t possibly cum anymore, and she stood up and wiped her mouth off with an angry look on her face.

  “Put your shit on and let yourself out, nigga,” she said as she walked toward the connecting bathroom. I didn’t even respond. I just got my shit back on and dropped a few hundred on the table because I knew it would make her mad.

  When I came out the room, Khalid was standing in the hallway with his bedroom door open. I didn’t even bother to acknowledge him. I just pulled my fitted cap down on my head further and went about my business. I needed to make this paper before the block got hot, and Street better had handled that shit by the time I got back around there.

  Joey Street

  Life in the Fast Lane

  I deaded that nigga. I just closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. What choice did I have? It was either kill or be killed, and even though he was my girl’s blood, what could I do? He violated the code of the streets, and since I wasn’t ready to meet my maker, I had to make moves. They wanted me to ditch the body as well, and that wasn’t a problem, because I was good at covering my tracks, but looking Shanyce in the face would prove to be difficult, knowing what I did. The good thing was that his family was used to him being gone for days, so they wouldn’t suspect anything at first. The funeral would be the bullshit, and mentally, I wasn’t ready for none of it.

  His body slid to the side and hit the floor in slow motion, taking the chair with him, and I was speechless. The silencer on the gun made a world of difference, but the shit felt hot in my hands, and my reflexes caused me to drop the gun at my feet. Bird and Choice had satisfied looks on their faces, and I supposed that was a good thing, since I was the one that was still standing.

  I went into autopilot, cutting the rope from the tilted chair that he was tied to and moving the chair out of the way so that I could stretch his body out on the carpet. I rolled his ass up like I was rolling a long-ass Dutch, and tucked him tightly in the corner until I could make that move. I didn’t even bother to look at Choice and Bird. Instead, I went into the bathroom to wash my face and to check my clothes for blood. I knew they wouldn’t let me go home to change if my clothes were a mess.

  Despite a few droplets of blood on the toe of my Tims, I was still in business. I used a paper towel to wet the spot and try to dab it off, but that proved to be useless, so I shook that shit off, because I couldn’t do anything about it now. I went into the living room to watch TV, where Choice and Bird were now sitting.

  I wanted to call Shanyce, but I knew if I even thought about reaching for my phone, it would be a problem. They left my phone right there to tempt me, but it must have been turned off because it wasn’t vibrating or anything. I knew Shanyce had to have called me at the very least a thousand times, but I had to play it cool. Once I ditched the body, I could go home.

  My mouth felt like cotton, and I was suddenly hungry as shit. These dudes were watching my every move to see how I would react or if I would spaz out, but I played it cool. I just took my bag of food from the table and popped the shit in the microwave so that I could get my grub on. I didn’t even bother to ask for the cup of orange juice I took from his refrigerator, since I had left mine in my ride. Although I knew Choice didn’t allow eating in his living room, I took my shit right back in there and ate it.

  He didn’t say a word; his look said it all. I acted like I ain’t even see that shit as I enjoyed my breakfast platter from earlier and watched TV.

  “We gonna move the body out around ten when the block dies down. We’ll take it out the back way and move towards the park,” I said to them after I was done eating and my stomach felt satisfied. I figured we had a better chance of moving the body out the back door, just in case some fiends were out, or the law was driving by.

  Choice shook his head in acknowledgment and Bird continued to look at me like he was disse
cting me or something. Fuck that nigga. I had other shit on my mind, like how the hell I was gonna get out the game and move my family away from this bullshit. I didn’t want my son thinking this shit was his only option, because even though we never talked about it, I knew he was aware of what I did. He stayed too fly to be getting that shit off of a working man’s salary, and he always had the newest shit out.

  I sat back in Choice’s plush-ass chair and allowed my eyes to close for what felt like a brief second. I was instantly taken back to that day down the park when I was twelve years old. There were these two guys I used to roll with, Adam and Gabriel, that lived out Bartram Village. We would always go sit by this huge wall that the Schuylkill River ran next to. Across the park they had an entire play set, complete with a slide and jungle gym, but we felt like we were way too smooth for that and opted to converse by the rock wall and talk about our week.

  On the low, Gabriel always hated Adam because Adam’s mom kept him in Stacey Adams, khaki pants, and Polo shirts. He didn’t run around the Ville in dusty jeans and hand-me-down T-shirts like Gabriel did, and although I wasn’t stepping out in Staceys, mom dukes kept me on point in the latest gear, and I stayed with a fresh cut.

  On this particular day, I was rocking this fresh to death light blue Adidas sweat suit with the white strips down the side of the legs and the big Adidas emblem on the back of my jacket. I had on a pure white Kangol hat and a white wife beater underneath that had me thinking I was looking like LL Cool J in his “Rock the Bells” video. My mom promised me a herringbone chain for my birthday just like the one LL had, and I couldn’t wait.

  We were sitting by the wall debating about who had the better power out of the Fantastic Four when Gabriel heard a noise on the other side of the wall.

  “Y’all hear that?” he asked with this strange look on his face. We got quiet and listened, and it surely sounded like something was trying to climb up the wall. Now, we knew there were abandoned cars and shit that were in the water, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a body floating up the river either.