Thirsty

by Mike Sanders

  Monk left after about an hour or so after our conversation, leaving Sapphire and I alone. We had a few drinks and tried to relax so we could get our minds off of what had just happened. She told me about her cousin’s phone call.

  “Joy called and left a message on my voicemail this morning.”

  She told me what Joy had said about J.T. and his cousin and my response to this was, “Fuck Joy! Her hatin’ ass needs to get some damn bizness.”

  I thought, That damn girl is always hatin. It never stops with that silly heifer.

  Joy was jealous as hell and enjoyed keeping that thing called misery company. But I wasn’t getting ready to feed into her childish drama.

  Sapphire and I chatted for a while before I decided it was time for me to head on home.

  “You gonna be okay here by yourself? You sure you don’t wanna come to my place for the night?”

  I was concerned about her. She assured me that she would be fine, so I left and headed home to relax. As soon as I stepped inside my condo I kicked off my sandals and began removing my clothes, going straight to the bathroom to run some bath water. I was in dire need of a hot bubble bath because J.T. had left me with aching limbs due to all of the acrobatic positions he had put me through the previous night.

  Apricot scented oils from Victoria’s Secret had my bathroom smelling delectable as I climbed into the tub with a tall frosted glass of Nuvo. All lights were out and the dim room was illuminated by candles as I relaxed and treated my body to a much-needed soak.

  The rest of my night consisted of me drinking and watching television until my eyelids got heavy. I finally passed out after the eleven o’clock news went off. The last report I remembered seeing was about Cross’s murder. They reported that the police were on the lookout for a navy blue SUV. Neither make nor model was mentioned.

  I slept the night away peacefully until my phone rang early the next morning, bringing me out of my alcohol-induced slumber. I rubbed my eyes and looked over at the clock and noticed the time.

  “Who da hell callin’ here this goddamn early?” I hissed as I squinted at the sunlight that had peeked its way through my venetian blinds. I rolled over and snatched up the phone from my nightstand.

  “Yeah?” I answered in a tired and agitated voice, ready to go off on whoever it was. However, what I heard the person on the other end of the phone relay to me snapped me wide-awake, and had me gasping for air!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN SAPPHIRE

  After Justice had left my house, I tried to no avail to go about my day as normally as possible. But I couldn’t stay focused. Visions of Cross’s smiling face and the sound of his raspy voice kept invading my mind. The last words I’d told him before he had left my house were, “Be careful.” Damn, I guessed he just hadn’t been careful enough and it had ended up costing him his life.

  I sat around and thought long and hard about what I’d gotten myself into. The game I had initiated myself into was no joke. I really started having major regrets for asking Justice to put me on with her hustle because it was just too dangerous. Whoever had gunned Cross down was more than likely someone who he’d robbed and the retribution he’d paid was something you can not give back. There were so many things I wished I could say to him. So many feelings and emotions I wished I could’ve expressed to him to let him know that he had someone in this cruel world that truly cared about him. The more I thought about him the more my heart ached. I felt as if I’d dissected the bitter ending of his life from what little I actually knew about him, and I ended up keeping the wrong piece.

  I thought back to when I’d helped Justice gain entry to the house in Rock Hill and wondered if this incident with Cross had been a repercussion from that. If so, I knew those girls definitely knew what me and Justice’s faces looked like. So many thoughts swirled through my head, to the point in which I’d ended up with a brain-throbbing migraine. This night definitely called for a couple of Valiums.

  I’d needed a few hours of solitude, so my house was eerily silent. There was neither television nor radio playing. My cell had been turned off so I couldn’t be disturbed as I brooded and waddled in my self-misery. Lying in my freshly made bed, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to push myself to get up. As soon as I’d mustered up the strength to move I arose from my bed and headed for the bathroom. My bare feet disappeared into the carpet as I drug myself to the bathroom and flipped on the light switch. When my eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness I looked into the mirror and saw how red and puffy they were from crying for Cross. I reached up and opened my medicine cabinet and retrieved my much-needed bottle of Valium. I popped two of the small pills and put the bottle back.

  “Fuck that,” I said aloud as I grabbed the bottle once more and poured yet another pill into my palm. I threw all three into the back of my throat followed by a glass of tap water.

  “That oughtta do it,” I mumbled. “Three of them should do the job, ’cause I really don’t feel like dreaming about no damn bodies tonight.”

  After rewrapping my scarf, I turned off the light and made my way back to my bed praying for some peaceful sleep. My satin sheets felt so damn good as I curled up beneath them and let the Vs do their thing. The comfort of my soft, warm bed coupled with the effects of the pills was powerfully soothing. The feeling reminded me of a gentle cascade of warm water as I closed my eyes and let sleep consume me. It seemed as if I had passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  “Ssssssss, ummmm,” I purred, because I felt Cross’s hands caressing my inner thighs as I licked my lips with a sensuous smile plastered on my face.

  He moved from my thighs to my crotch area and I felt myself getting wet with anticipation. My hips started involuntarily rotating in tune to his caressing fingers as I attempted to open my eyes so I could look at him. The Valium had my eyelids feeling as if they weighed a ton as I felt Cross’s hands all over my body. Then there were more hands. Travis’s hands. Then there were yet another set of hands that belonged to Red. It felt as if an octopus was caressing me with eight different hands that gradually began getting rougher and rougher. They were so rough that

  THIRSTY they became torturous. I attempted to escape these brutal hands as they squeezed, kneaded, and plowed along my body with vigor, but I couldn’t seem to get away from them. No matter how hard I tried, my eyes would not open so I could snap out of this crazy dream.

  Suddenly, I felt a hand slap me with so much force that I could taste blood pooling up in my mouth and at this point my eyes immediately sprang open. I was somewhat lost in a haze and my vision was cloudy for a moment. But when the fog in my head cleared and I could finally focus, what I saw almost made me piss on myself!

  Three figures in all black with the faces of Satan were looming over me. I saw their horns and I just knew I’d overdosed, died, and gone to the life beyond.

  “Welcome to hell bitch!” I heard one of the figures say just before a powerful fist to my left cheek made my vision blurry again. I felt the bone in my jaw shatter beneath the madman’s fist as he struck me repeatedly.

  This was definitely not a dream as I tried to scream but one of the assailants put his hand over my bloody mouth and muffled my cries while applying pressure to my freshly broken jaw. My scarf was pulled from my head just before a hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and drug me from my bed and slammed me onto the floor so hard it seemed like I could feel my ribs cave in. All the breath had been knocked out of me as I began gasping for air.

  I tried to plead for my life but I was rewarded with a kick to my face so hard it made me see stars.

  Oh my God, why hadn’t I gone with Justice?

  One of them hissed with a deadly tone.

  “Bitch, didn’t nobody pull yo’ chain, so stop fuckin’ barkin’!”

  I recognized this voice just before he kicked me in the stomach, causing me to throw up all over his shoes.

  I screamed out in pain, “Please. Stop! Oh, God. Noooooo!”

  “Didn’t we say shut the fuck up?”r />
  Another kick to my face. I felt my nose crack. Blood spurted from my nose and mouth, causing me to get choked as I crawled on weak, wobbly knees. I was in so much pain that I prayed for death to come as viscous blows rained down on my head and body until I faded to black.

  In my state of unconsciousness, I heard a sound that mirrored that of a wounded and dying animal. I was so numb and delirious that I hadn’t even realized that the sound was coming from me.

  I prayed again for God to come and claim my soul just before total darkness swept me away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN CARLOS

  So you gonna keep frontin’ on a nigga like that, huh?” I was walking towards the bar area in my condo with my phone up to my ear. The woman on the other end was someone whom I’d been wanting to fuck for months, but we’d been playing phone tag. She would hit me on my cell and I’d miss her call, then I would hit her back and she would miss my call. It had been going down like that for a while but I’d finally caught her. I was standing there listening to Janeka tease a nigga with a seductive tone in that baby-like voice I’d become obsessed with since I’d first laid eyes on her.

  “You know I’m tryna see you, Daddy. But you never seem to have time for a sistah,” Janeka whined. Just the thought of how fine this bitch was had my dick tapping my zipper, trying to escape the confines of my shorts. Standing right at an even five feet and weighing in at 135 pounds, this girl was stacked like a brick shit house. She was light skinned with shoulder-length jet-black hair and I fantasized about eating her fine ass alive. This bitch was nothing but the truth.

  “Let’s stop cuttin’ corners, I’m tryna see you ASAP. So, what’s good?” I was pouring a shot of vodka into a glass and balancing the phone against my shoulder and ear.

  “Well, you know I gotta be at work at six in the morning and after I get off I got a few clients at the salon tomorrow evening. So, what about tomorrow night? I can call you when I’m about to leave the shop.”

  “No doubt,” I responded. We talked for a few more minutes before the call ended. I was already anticipating seeing her the following night. But what I really wanted to do was to call her back and tell her to meet me somewhere right then. But it was late and I knew she had to get up early the following morning so I just satisfied myself with the thought of seeing her later.

  Janeka was definitely my kind of girl. Intelligent and fine? That was a combination a nigga could rarely find. I was kind of impressed by the fact that she was independent and working two jobs. She was an accountant with Wells Fargo by day and a beautician by night. I loved the fact that she was trying to pave her own way without riding on the coattails of a man. Independence in a female is always a plus and without a doubt, a definite turn-on. I was digging this chick!

  “You finally got her, huh?” Dave asked from the sofa, while puffing on a chronic- filled leaf.

  “Yeah, it’s about damn time. We been missin’ each other like two ships in the night, but I got her ass now.”

  I took a seat on the sofa also.

  “You know I gotta cop some of them ‘blue diamonds’ and fuck that bitch for hours! She gonna remember Los for a loooooong time to come!”

  We both laughed at my idea of using Viagra to keep my dick hard for hours.

  “I’ma have that bitch Jonesin’ for this wood like a junkie needin’ a fix!” I grabbed my crotch as Dave laughed.

  “Nigga, you a fool,” Dave commented.

  Dave and I had been lounging around the condo all evening counting money and weighing out dope. As soon as the last ounce of coke had been weighed and the last bill had been spit out of the money counting machine we’d started smoking and drinking. It was somewhat an unwritten rule for me that while handling business no smoking or drinking was allowed. Too many mistakes were imminent when a person doesn’t have a clear and sober mind.

  Dave passed me the weed he’d been puffing. I took it and inhaled it like I was taking my last breath. I got choked immediately.

  “Lemme find out,” Dave said as he laughed at me.

  My eyes were burning and I was still coughing as I handed him back the weed. He kicked his feet up on my coffee table and clicked on my 63-inch plasma TV with the remote. He was smoking that strong ass weed like it was a cigarette. It was said that this little nigga had an “iron lung” and now I was starting to believe that it was true.

  I continued to drink my vodka as I sat back on the plush sofa and let my mind drift to the events that had taken place over the past several weeks. Money had been coming so fast I’d began to think that me and my niggas were the only ones in Charlotte selling dope. Money was becoming so plentiful that my dream car, the Rolls Royce Phantom, was right at my fingertips. Now that I could afford to cop two or three without it putting a dent in my pockets I didn’t even want it anymore. I had graduated past that phase of blowing guap, and now stacking it had become my new obsession.

  Money had become my aphrodisiac. I loved everything about it, the feel of it, the smell of it, It had gotten to the point where money could turn me on like no woman ever could. With every hundred grand I counted, my dick would get rock hard. Even stash spots had become few and far between lately after the incident that had happened at Mark’s place. Because of that situation, I had begun take extra precautions.

  Thinking about Mark made my mind wonder to Cross and the way Face had handled him. It still made me smile when I remembered the look in Cross’s eyes when he had seen me sitting in that truck. I should have taken a snapshot of that shit with my phone to send it to all of my niggas. Telling them about it was one thing, but there is absolutely nothing like a frozen moment. Feeling remorseful was not an option because I knew that those who seek to achieve things should never show mercy. And that’s the philosophy that I lived by. No mercy!

  “Fuck’s on yo’ mind, nigga?” Dave asked as he exhaled a cloud of smoke through his burnt lips.

  I looked over at my lil’nigga and took a deep breath.

  “Ain’t shit. Just thinking,” I replied as I picked up my drink from the coffee table and gulped down what was left of it.

  The television was on the Hip-Hop satellite video channel and Raw Vids, a down south version of Uncut was just coming on. For the next hour and a half it would be nothing but ass and titties bouncing on the flat screen. The first video came on and I saw a familiar face.

  “Yo, you see that bitch right there?”

  I was pointing at the screen at one of the females in the video.

  “Right there!” I repeated as the girl flashed onto the screen again.

  “The bitch in the pink?” Dave asked while slouched down in the chair.

  “Yeah. That’s Kat.”

  “Kat? The bitch from ATL?” Dave asked with knitted eyebrows.

  “Yeah, the bitch who be lightweight stalkin’ a nigga.” I laughed.

  “Damn! She phat as a muthafucka!”

  “And that’s all that crazy ass bitch got goin’ for herself. She’s as dumb as a box of rocks and looney as hell!” I stated as I watched Kat do her thing on the video.

  Dave was right, she was phat as hell and I must admit that she did have a bomb shot of pussy. And the head was off the Richter scale! Superhead Steffans didn’t have shit on her. Kat should’ve been the one to coin the phrase“slow neck.” I’d blown her back out a few times while on those blue diamonds while I was in Atlanta. But since I’d stopped fucking with her she’d been blowing a nigga’s phone up. She had even showed up at Club Stir one night when I was there with another broad and she ended up showing her natural ass that night. That had been the first time I’d beaten a bitch’s ass in public and I ended up regretting doing it. It wasn’t because she had called the police or anything like that, but it was because she had said that the ass whuppin’ had turned her on. Crazy bitch!

  “I done seen that bitch in a lotta videos. I ain’t know she was the same bitch from ATL,” Dave stated while watching Kat shake her ass with lustful eyes. “A paranoid schizophrenic or not, she can st
ill get it,” he added, and then thumped ashes off the blunt into the glass ashtray that was on the table.

  I thought for a moment, then looked at Dave and said, “Bitches… beat ’em and they’ll forgive you. Flatter ’em and they may or may not see through you. But if you fuck around and start ignoring ’em, watch ’em lose they muthafuckin’ minds! Be careful what you wish for, my nigga.” I shook my head at the logic I’d just dropped on Dave and added, “You just might get that shit.”

  Dave looked up with bloodshot eyes and pointed to the television at Kat.

  “Hell, I’ll fuck her and beat her fine ass if that’s all she want a nigga to do.” His comment made us both laugh as I arose from the sofa to refill my glass. When I reached the bar area I heard a knock on the door. I knew exactly who it was from the series of taps so I told Dave to open it. In waltzed Ali, Supreme, and Scarface.

  “What’s good? What up? What up?” Dave greeted the three men one by one with a pound as they entered my condo.

  “Los, what up baby?” Ali spoke as he closed the door behind himself.

  “What it do? What up Face? Preme, what’s good, nigga?” I spoke to my three niggas who’d all taken seats in my living room and were bobbing their heads to the music from the videos.

  I walked over and joined them while kicking Preme’s feet off the table so I could pass. I squeezed between him and the table and sat back down on the sofa. Face had sparked up some weed and was seated on the love seat, being his usual withdrawn self while Ali was on the lounge chair dialing a number on his cell phone.

  Preme kicked his feet back up on the table and I unconsciously glanced over at his shoes. His black Timbs had what looked like dried up blood and vomit on one of the toes.