Crossroads: An Anthology

by LaShaun, Elizabeth

  His pistol cuffed once, twice and then a third time. The last shot hit its mark. The female cop bucked backwards as the bullet tore into her chest. Her gun went spiraling loosely into the air and clattered into the street, away from the bleeding officer. The bald man searched around, spotting Holman being stopped and then wrestled to the ground by self-proclaimed do-gooders holding him for the cops. It was hard to look like a victim wearing handcuffs. Everyone of course assumed, the person must be a bad guy.

  The bald man turned to his car. Black smoke rose from the engine and two of the tires were flat. He needed another car. Running down the street, he came up on a driver who had stayed to watch the shootout. He yanked the driver’s side door open, pointed his gun and ordered the driver to get out. Getting behind the wheel, the bald man did yet another U-turn, came up beside the do-gooders holding Holman and pointed his pistol.

  “Get off him, now,” he bellowed.

  They complied. It seemed the do-gooders had gotten overzealous. Holman was battered and bruised. He was also unconscious. Waving his pistol, the bald man ordered, “Put him in the trunk”

  Two men carried Holman over to the car as the trunk popped open. They stuffed him inside and then moved away. The bald man glanced back at the restaurant, spotting Pretty Pamela Reeb, kneeling beside the male cop. She glanced up toward the car. She looked as if her breath had caught inside her throat.

  The bald man grinned; savoring the woman’s every beautiful detail. “We’ll see each other real soon,” he said aloud, the second act had finally come to a close.

  Anthony

  A splash of cold water woke me from a dark pit. Opening my eyes, nothing was in focus. I clinched my teeth in pain. I couldn’t remember what had happened, though I recalled being arrested and being taken to Madden’s car, but after that it was hazy. Wait a minute, I was running away from something—someone. A group of men grabbed me and started to hit me. They wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain and hit me even harder. More water struck my face, went down my throat.

  “Wake up, Holman. We need to talk,” a stranger said.

  The ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing the voice clearly. After a series of coughs, trying to clear throat, I asked, “Who are you?” I blinked repeatedly in an attempt to regain my vision. A hard slap across my cheek, forced my head to the side.

  “I’m asking the questions,” the stranger said. “But since we’re going to be friends here, you can call me Bald Man.”

  “Bald Man?” I whispered, more to myself. The question got me another slap across the face, wrenching my head the opposite direction. The hearing in both ears was muffled.

  “No more questions. You got that?”

  I nodded, fearing I would get slapped again. I tried shifting, but I could barely move. I was sitting up, tightly bound to a chair.

  Glass crunched under the Bald Man’s feet as he circled the chair. His warm breath wafted against the back of my ear. “What did Milroy tell you when you visited The Erikson Group?”

  My heart hammered, had he been following Pam and me. I thought about playing dumb, but something told me that I would get worse than a slap if I did. “Not much really,” I said honestly.

  A gloved hand stretched over my shoulder with a silenced pistol. He pointed the gun at my groin. “Let’s try this again,” he said, so low I could barely make out his words with the ringing in my ears. “Talk, or I’ll guarantee you’ll never have children.”

  My blurred vision cleared with an adrenaline rush through my body. My gaze transfixed on where the gun was aimed, I quickly said, “He said my fiancé was once admitted at The Erikson Group, being treated for Dissociative identity disorder.”

  Bald Man made a sound that might have been a laugh. He pulled back the weapon and I relaxed, only a bit. Scanning the room, I realized I was in the living room of my house. The crunching glass of the floor was the destruction that Yolanda had made. Why would he bring me back to my place? I tried to turn my head to see my captor, but he pressed the pistol against my creek and pushed my face away.

  “Milroy loves playing with a person’s mind. Me, I find more pleasure with cutting into a person’s flesh,” Bald Man said. The pistol slipped away from my skin. He said, “Stop telling me what to do?”

  I asked, “What?”

  More glass crashed under the weight of his foot as he moved away. “I know what I’m doing. I told you before I need Holman free.”

  Bald Man wasn’t talking to me. He might have been arguing with someone on a cell phone, but I wasn’t going to turn around to find out. The further he moved away, the more muffled his voice became. The ringing in my ears was fading and I strained to hear his side of the argument.

  “I brought him here, because the police have already been through the house. But I’m hoping the target will be intelligent enough to figure out where I’ve taken him. That’s right, I do have an actual plan.”

  Target? Were they discussing Yolanda? Was she the target?

  “Wait a minute,” Bald Man said. “I think I hear something outside the house.”

  I hadn’t heard a thing, but that was no surprise. My hearing wasn’t a hundred percent. Bald Man approached me from behind, shoved my chin into my chest and placed the muzzle of the pistol at the nape of my neck.

  “Move and I’ll kill you,” he said. After what seemed an eternity, he let out a loud laugh. “So you’ve finally arrived.”

  Though my hearing was improving, I hadn’t heard anyone enter. The way Bald Man had my head angled I couldn’t see who he was talking to.

  “Nothing to say? Not even a long time no see?” Bald Man asked playfully.

  “Yolanda is that you?” I cried out, “Run, honey! Run!”

  “Don’t waste your breath, Holman. She won’t run. I can see from her expression that she’s tired of running.”

  I tried to lift my head, but Bald Man pushed it back down. “Don’t worry about me, okay? Don’t trade your life for mine.” With the pressure of my chin I could only mutter.

  Bald Man laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? She’s not here to help you, Holman. She’s here to kill you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve cheated on her, remember? With Pretty Pamela Reeb.”

  “I never—”

  “Too late for excuses, Holman. Too late for everything. You’re either going to die by your fiancé’s hand or mine. Too bad for you.”

  “No,” I said staring catatonically at my quivering thighs. “This is insane. I didn’t do anything. Why are you holding a gun to my head?”

  “Because you fell in love with the wrong girl,” he explained. “I loved her once too and she showed her affection by trying to kill me. After she left The Erikson Group and gave up doing contract work. I spent years trying to prove to my employers that she was a threat to the organization. Told them they needed to bring her back into the fold. When she stopped taking her meds, I knew it was only a matter of time before she screwed up. The meds kept her from remembering things. Without them, her old conditioning started to slowly kick back in, along with her memory.”

  Milroy had said something about her being an assassin. He said it was all in her head. Was that a lie? Was Yolanda a professional killer? But how would Bald Man know that unless he had been watching her. Milroy himself didn’t discover that fact until Pam and I arrived to his office. We’d been thinking Yolanda had been setting me up to be arrested, but it was Bald Man. He has to be the one behind this.

  “Yolanda,” I said, “It was him, Bald Man. He’s the one who sent you the pictures. He faked everything.”

  No answer.

  Bald Man laughed. “You think she’s going to believe any crap from you, Holman?”

  In desperation, I blurted my thoughts, hoping she’d listen. “How does he know you went off your meds then, Yolanda? Milroy himself didn’t find out about it until today. Because Bald Man has been watching you, that’s how?”

  Bald Man let out an audible gasp. “What are y
ou doing, Yolanda? Don’t listen to him. All Milroy wants is for you to return to The Erikson Group to be reconditioned. Don’t listen to a man who’s desperate to save his life.” Glass crumbled as he stepped back, taking the pistol from my neck.

  “Yolanda,” I said jerking my head up.

  I peered wild eyed at absolutely nothing.

  “Fine,” Bald Man yelled. If that’s the way you want this to play out, then let’s do it. The truth is, I’d planned to kill you anyway. No one shuns my love, stabs me in the leg and lives.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Bald Man, who wasn’t a man at all.

  Yolanda stood in a corner of the room, near the window pointing a pistol toward the doorway that led to the kitchen. No one was there. She fired twice, plaster exploded from the wall. And then she shouted, “Yes. After all these years! She’s dead! And it’s all thanks to you Holman. Because you loved her, you made all of this possible.”

  The front door burst opened. Sergeant Maddox and two uniformed officers came rushing in, there guns pointed at Yolanda.

  She said, “Looks like we got ourselves some party crashers.” Her pistol came up, aimed at me.

  ‘Drop the gun,” Madden shouted.

  “Make me, tough guy. Oh by the way. How’s the face?”

  Madden automatically reached for a bruise on his jaw. “It’s fine. Tell you what, Ms. Blakely, we can—”

  Yolanda’s face went into a rage. “Why did you call me that? She’s in the kitchen, lying on the floor dead.”

  “You’re Yolanda,” I said softly. “There’s no one on the floor. You only shot holes in the wall.”

  She seemed confused. “What the devil are you talking about, Holman?”

  I swallowed hard and then said, “There is no Bald Man. He’s a figment of your imagination. The Erikson Group is not an agency of assassins. It’s a hospital. Try to remember.”

  “Lies,” she yelled. “All lies.”

  “It’s the truth,” Pam said pushing her way through the crowded doorway. “You’re Yolanda Blakely, my best friend. Tony’s fiancé.”

  Yolanda looked at Pam and then at me. She lowered her arm. “Tony?”

  “Put your gun down, Ms. Blakely, please,” Madden said tenderly.

  Yolanda’s face turned into a mask of anger. “Lies,” she yelled quickly raising the pistol.

  The loud bang from Madden’s gun roared like thunder through the house.

  Yolanda crumbled to her knees, looked at me as if I had pulled the trigger. “Lies,” she said before falling all the way to the floor, dead.

  Pam

  The funeral for Yolanda was held a week after her death. It was quiet with only a handful of people who were mostly friends with either me or Tony. All charges against Tony had been dropped. The Erikson Group made sure that was done quietly, along with anything about the organization appearing in the news. It was all about keeping that ninety-eight percent success rate the company was so proud of.

  Dr. Albert Milroy was forced to retire a day after the shooting. The reason he’d been so open, The Erikson Group was mandated to keep tabs on all former patients. Somehow, when Yolanda didn’t renew her prescription, it had gone under Milroy’s radar. He tried to cover it up, but after Yolanda’s death, it became impossible.

  Tony had a hard week, but I was there for him and he was there for me. We both lost a good friend yet sharing the experience brought us closer than either of us thought possible. We still haven’t admitted our special feelings for each other. Being so soon after what happened, it didn’t feel right.

  Maybe it never will. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

  Our connection goes way beyond love.

  About the Authors:

  KR Bankston - CEO & Founder of Kirabaco Publishing,

  resides in Jonesboro GA. KR has always had a love of reading and writing, crafting several short stories and plays, before publishing commercially. KR is an avid sports fan, enjoying Football and Basketball during the down times when a new novel isn’t in the works. KR is the author of : A Deadly Encounter, Sins of the Father, Smoke & Mirrors, King of the Game.

  Elizabeth LaShaun – resides in her hometown of Chicago with her family. As a child she wrote short stories, but then turned her attention to reading. At the encouragement of her family & book club, she completed her first novel. In 2010 Elizabeth founded Mayott Publishing and publishes her work through her company. Besides writing Elizabeth enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with family and friends. Elizabeth is the author of: Inconvenient Love

  Keith K. Williams – Born & raised in the gritty city of New York, Keith used writing as an outlet to ease the weight of the world he was trapped in. He’s become a soldier determined to bring his unique style of fiction to the forefront of the world of literature. He’s been labeled as a “Beast with a Pen” by his peers & contemporaries. Keith still resides in Brooklyn and manages to balance his time between his two loves; writing and his duties as a single father. Keith is the Author of : Water Flows Under Doors, and Open Spaces

  DK Gaston – was born in Detroit, Michigan. He served in the military as an Infantry Soldier. After leaving the Army, he earned his Bachelor’s degree at Davenport University and began a career in Computer Networking. Since then, he’s earned two Masters Degrees from the University of Phoenix. DK Gaston is the author of : 13: An Avery Hudson Adventure, Lost Hours, Darkest Hours, The Friday House, Tease, and The Promise. He is a devoted husband and father residing in Michigan. He is currently working on his next novel.

  Contact all authors: darkchocolatepublishing@gmail.com