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The Colored Doors Series: BlueDoor©2011 Exobia, The Netherlands, ISBN 978-90-817113-0-2 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
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BLUE DOOR
* * *
“Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.”
Tennessee Williams
Chapter One
Benjamin Shine was thirty-six years old. He kept that thought in his head, so he wouldn’t forget when he was executed by the state of Texas. He held on in his mind to everything that led him down this route.
He started when he was thirteen, under the alias Shiny B. He snatched purses and not necessarily from some old lady on the bus either. Then he grew his talents by picking off cars…nice ones. His reputation took off, and he got the chance to earn street-cred.
At the age of fifteen, his badge of honor was a blue bandanna. He swore to wear it for the rest of his days. The rag was a prided tool in many of his attacks. It cloaked his identity when worn across his face. It was also useful for tying wrists of those he bound up. Then it was Shiny B’s turn to rank up only a year later, second to Jo-Jo—the headscarf soaked up his sweat as he stood underneath a deserted overpass and pulled the trigger on a cop.
That was the moment Shiny B was inducted into a machine. He’d go on to commit more crimes and murders the police could never pin on him. It took several years, but they got him dead to right from an anonymous tip, for the cop-killing he did when he was sixteen. His case became recognized nationwide. He was a minor at the time of offense, and the youngest to serve a capital punishment sentence.
And on June 11, 2010 at 10:00 am, his life ended and this strange existence began. He couldn’t exactly recall when he arrived. If it was a day ago, a week, or the same morning. However, one familiar calling from his past latched onto him and followed him through to Purgatory.
“Prisoner 23854171. It’s time to move on, buddy.” Warner stared with sparkling green eyes and smiled at him with those pouty, rose-shade lips. “How ya doing?”
He groaned and rose from the floor. “I feel sick as hell.”
“Yeah, that’s normal.”
Shiny B rubbed his neck. A metallic, yet sour, taste electrified his mouth after having had fed off Warner. Then recollection sparked in his eyes. He immediately checked himself over and Warner chuckled.
Yeah, he would laugh. Shiny B frowned. The last time he showed up in the hall of colored doors, he was naked and enjoyed the larger dick the afterlife granted him. For that sin, Warner ravaged his ass with his cock. But this go around Shiny B was fully dressed in the same, tan suit with narrow brown pinstripes, a casual black T-shirt underneath, and russet Italian shoes the vampire gifted him before he left through the portal.
Warner floated through the glowing mist and unfastened a button from his collar. He removed a necklace with a round, silver medallion that was flat against his hairless chest.
“Here…” He fastened the necklace around Shiny B’s neck. “Wear this for a while. It should help with the queasiness.” He glided his icy hand across the man’s bald head, and his long nails lightly grazed Shiny B’s skin. “I want you to know,” Warner resumed, “I hold no grudge about you coming after me.” He took a step back and looked him over. “Better?”
Shiny B missed the design etched on the amulet, but his stomach immediately calmed. “Yeah, GQ, it’s working.”
Warner grinned and exposed his fangs. “Good, but don’t get too attached. You’ll need to learn to control the Change on your own.”
He motioned with his fingers. Immediately Shiny B drifted toward him and wobbled as he tried to stand straight in the air. “Whoa, man! You need to let a brother know when you do that shit!”
“All right, all right.” He chuckled and lowered him to the floor. “I think we understand each other. You follow my direction.”
“I got it!”
“Well, come along then. Your next case awaits, my friend.”
The evening’s too chilly for a July evening. The pavement emits a mist from the heat which stifled the city only hours earlier. Headlights and streetlights illuminate the main avenue. Tires slash puddles of rain as vehicles race to beat the amber traffic light and wet pedestrians waiting to cross.
A Moroccan-blue Bentley’s nearly invisible in the night. It’s so shiny it’s a mere reflection of its surroundings while stopped in the left lane. The woman behind the wheel watches three teenagers brush road-water off their skirts with shrieks of fuck this… fuck that… They head for the Blue Ember Club.
One girl shouts, “Hey ain’t that Missy?” and they stop midway the crossing and ogle the Bentley.
Missy acknowledges them with a raise of her thin, tanned hand above the steering wheel; her diamond and white gold rings bling through the glass.
“Hey, Mis-say!” They wave her off like a celebrity, then step onto the curb and join the queue at the club’s entrance.
Missy lowers the visor and checks the mirror. She feels like a star every night, as she should. Her short, blond hair has metallic-blue streaks feathered on top, and she flattens the longer strands toward her cheekbone. She closes the mirror and maneuvers her Bentley into a designated space at the Blue Ember Club parking lot, where motion lamps blink on.
Afterward she picks up her Blackberry, briefcase and umbrella—an oversize man with muscles like tiny hills up and down his dark-brown arms immediately opens her door. The pale scars on his face and neck make him look older.
His gold teeth glimmer in the light as he smiles. “How you doing tonight, Missy?” comes his baritone voice amidst the soft hammering of music.
“Doing good, Biggie.”
He takes the umbrella and shields her from any remnant raindrops, while she exits the car one shapely, tanned leg at a time. Biggie’s gaze creeps upward the crevice exposed between her thighs, where the silver skirt hugs her ample hips. She stands barely 5’5 in her shiny stilettos, and her emerald eyes gaze upward at him.
“Here, let me get that for you.”
He reaches for her attaché case, but she snatches it away. “No. That’s all right, I got it.” She shuts the door, locks up and activates the alarm. “Is J here?”
“Not yet.” Biggie rushes alongside her as she walks toward a blue steel panel in the wall of the club. He produces a hand radio from his rear pocket and presses a button. “Tank, open blue door.”
There’s a click, and the panel swings outward. Tank greets them, and they enter the stark, smoky corridor illuminated by ruby, navy, and green spotlights. The rhythm of the music pulses through Missy’s sequined tank top and into her chest.
There are party-goers huddled over cigarette lighters, spoons ablaze. Other patrons hold plates of glass, shards of mirror, or engraved business card holders beneath their faces. Their heads rise, and they swipe their noses then lean against the walls to ride the currents flooding their brains.
Missy moves toward an armored door at the end of the hall and shouts to Biggie, “Business looks good.”
He pushes a flaccid man to the side and clears the way for his boss. “Dollar dollar bill, baby.”
“That’s what I li
ke to hear.”
She raps her knuckles against the door six times in the beat of Missy Elliot’s Get Your Freak On. It unlocks and exposes a tall, lean guy who exchanges a delicate fist pound with her.
“What’s up, Missy?”
“Hey, Tye.”
He dances backward to the track the DJ plays, and she enters a spacious room of ivory: white walls, ceiling, furniture and floor tiles. There are three rows of tables with roughly twenty men and women seated on swivel bar stools—topless, wearing round face masks, surgical gloves, and body aprons. The workers cut, shake, weigh and package light blue powder into baggies of diverse volumes. Armed thugs guard the packagers, pacing and watching them diligently.
Missy nears her office at the back when she hears a sneeze. She whips around fiercely and sees a face mask dangling on the woman’s cream-colored neck. A fickle plume of dust rises from the table.
Colleagues stop and stare at the twenty-something, and a guardsman closes in. He removes his pistol from his pocket and cocks the hammer. The woman’s handful-sized breasts heave in a panic as she gazes at Missy with bulging, hazel eyes.
“Karen!” Missy points and moves quickly in her direction. “You hit any of that?”
Her thin, mocha lips round with short gasps and she shakes her head.
Missy gives her briefcase to the grizzly watchdog standing by. “Are you sure?”
“I-I-I think so.”
A flash of bling lands on her upper cheek with a crack. She screams and topples to the floor, a ball of flesh slithering under the table for cover.
“Boom!” Tye antagonizes, “Bitch goes down!” and causes others to snicker,
Missy draws back her fist. Her diamonds drip blood. Biggie immediately takes a part of his T-shirt and wipes her rings as she shouts, “Anybody else got allergies?”
The men and women lower their eyes to the tables and resume working.
“How many times I got to tell you motherfuckers…” Missy steps over to the guard and snatches her case back. “Be careful with my shit!”
She mumbles as she storms toward her office. Inside, a Mexican holds an automatic rifle with the barrel resting across his forearm. He towers over two men seated at a handcrafted, maple wood desk. They operate electronic money counters and, when the bills stop shuffling, they take the stack and bundle them with elastic bands, then fill the machine again.
The older is Julio Mendez. He wears a straw hat, an ebony ponytail wrapped over his shoulder toward his chest. He pauses and glances up at Missy as she shakes her fingers and sets her case on the floor by her desk.
“Sound like some action going down out there.”
Missy balls her hand and squeezes tightly with a groan as Biggie checks it. “I tell you, Pappi, it’s just more of the same stupidity I got to deal with every day.”
“I hear ya.”
“How’s the take tonight?” She lowers onto her chair and scrolls through her Blackberry using her good hand.
“Drink and product at $10k so far, but entrance needs to pick up.”
“Biggie,” Missy draws his attention from the security monitors on the wall, “get the bouncers to let more people in here.”
Pappi tells her, “They say they already at capacity.”
Her Blackberry vibrates. Before she answers, she orders Biggie, “Have Tank dump the X-fiends in the hall and tell Mike price at the door is now $30 a head.”
Chapter Two
Outside, a Black man pushes past the crowd waiting entry to the Blue Ember Club. He’s clean-cut and wears a suit with light gray pinstripes. Bald except for a patch of curly hair, he has a fine-line mustache above shapely, chocolate lips smiling at the bouncer as he steps to the door.
They pound fists, and the man’s gold cufflinks shimmer along with his chunky rings and wristwatch. Mike shouts over the music, “Hey, J, ’bout time you showed up.”
“You know if Missy here?”
“Yeah, she’s looking for you. Biggie says she wants you in her office.”
He nods. “Alright then, let me get in there.” He pats Mike on the shoulder. “Keep it righteous, brother.”
Inside, soft green and orange halogens beam upward from corners. Dark-blue spotlights accentuate an illuminated moon hanging behind the bar. Video fireplaces kindle sapphire flames on flat screens throughout and light a path to the dance floor.
A DJ elevated in a steel stage drives the energy with electronic music pumping from stacks of speakers below him. Men and women gyrate closely to each other, squatting, hips rotating and torsos grinding.
Layers of bass and rhythm beat through J’s gut. He pumps his fist in the air and trots through the mass of sweaty bodies toward a rear exit. He reaches the corridor with the steel door and spots Tank tossing a few addicts outside.
He chuckles and yells, “Another day, another dollar, brother.”
Tank glances at him and nods. “Missy’s waiting, go on in J. I’ll catch up with you later.”
A scuffle breaks out amongst the remaining X-fiends, and Tank hurries over to break it up.
“Woo!” J watches Tank punch a man in the face, then he turns and taps the code-knock to the back room.
The door opens, and J prances past Tye and the guards. He stops by Karen who holds a wet cloth on her cheekbone. She drops it from her trembling fingers and grips the edge of the table. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and closes her eyes—pushes her hips against her stool and sniffs uncontrollably. J looks at the nearest guard, then a soft moan draws his attention back to Karen. She squats on the stool with her legs spread and rubs her crotch back and forth along the seat.
J faces the armed man again. “When did this happen?”
“A few minutes ago. I was going to let Missy know, but she was on the phone.”
“Don’t worry about it.” J takes the pistol from him. “I’ll take care of it.”
Karen rides the stool wildly, moans of ecstasy growing louder the faster and harder she humps the seat. She gets on her feet and grabs a woman beside her. She pulls her near and shoves her tongue in her mouth, kissing her hungrily while fondling her small breasts. Quickly, her fingers search beneath her co-worker’s skirt. The woman struggles to push Karen off. Their tussle sends them twirling farther into the open, away from the others.
The workers stop and men giggle while watching. Some instigate them to go further, but the woman escapes Karen’s grasp.
J says, “A goddamn shame,” then raises the gun to Karen’s skull then pulls the trigger.
There are screams and groans of disgust. A slam erupts from inside Missy’s office, and she storms out. “What the hell’s going on out here!”
She immediately spots the pool of blood silhouetting Karen’s slumped body. She gazes at J holding the weapon, smoke spiraling up from the barrel, and walks over calmly.
“When did you get in?”
“Just a moment ago.” He points at his victim. “Karen was Xing the fuck out.”
“I figured as much. Glad you handled it.” She motions with a tilt of her head. “Come on, there’s something I need you to take care of.” She and J move toward her office, and she looks back at her employees. “Don’t just stand there, Tye! Get this shit cleaned up.” She flails her hand at the others. “Y’all, get back to work!”
Fifteen minutes later, the night sky pours down on Tye and Biggie. They struggle to put Karen’s body in the back of a red pickup, bending her limbs which continue to stiffen at an accelerated rate. Biggie finally draws a black tarp over the bed and fastens it to the connectors. Afterward he taps the side of the truck three times, and Tye pokes his hand out the window then drives off.
Biggie returns to the club to help clean Karen’s blood from the floor and sees J walk out Missy’s office with a sinister grin on his face.
Missy trails behind him then stands by a table. “Let me know if you run into any trouble.”
“Ain’t nuttin nuttin, baby girl,” J retorts then leaves.
W
arner and Shiny B walked through Purgatory’s gleaming corridor. There were various doors on either side, but they arrived at the blue one. The room had the same fluid luminescence as the hall. Shiny B thought about the connection between the last room he entered, the red door, and his previous assignment as Detective Shine.
“So, blue has something to do with what I did before being arrested, right?”
Warner nodded and motioned toward the holographic screens on the walls. Once again, Shiny B was forced to see his grandmother sitting in her favorite recliner; a video of him as a young boy playing in a field; and another montage showcasing his victims. He tore his eyes away from the little Black girl he’d taken from her house with the red door. He focused on images of his gang-brother Jo-Jo and him rolling cash, their blue bandannas lying on the table.
Warner went near the screen. “How much money did you make?”
“A lot,” Shiny B replied regretfully.
“And how much was left by the time you were caught?”
The silence was noticeable as the man shook his head, and Warner gaze at him.
“Hmm...” he huffed through his nose and finally answered, “None.”
“Ever heard of putting your earnings in a bank?” Warner asked and Shiny B flashed him a glance. “Oh, wait,” he continued, “You robbed them. That would’ve been awkward.”
“C’mon, man!”
“Hold on.” Warner raised his palms outward. “You guys join gangs, because the life you had was so bad. Yet, you never leave when you have what you want.” He held both hands up and ridiculed him with a laugh. “What’s the payoff? Does it really get you where you want to be?”
Shiny B exhaled hard. “Yeah, yeah….I get that now, aight?”
“A little too late, don’t you think?”
“So is this what I have to do, GQ—help some punk get out of a gang?”
“Well, how do you suppose that is, when you couldn’t do it yourself?” Warner dismissed him blatantly ignoring him and resumed, “No, we’re taking down the source on this one, my friend.”
Blue Door (The Colored Doors Series) Page 1
