The Mark

by Kiki Swinson

  “What the fuck is wrong with you people?” I screamed at Kanan after I caught my balance.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Kanan’s voice boomed. “Preech, throw that nigga in the backseat of the car. And Juice, hurry up with that shit! We gotta go,” Kanan yelled. “And you come with me,” he said, and grabbed my arm really hard.

  “Get off of me!” I screeched so loudly my throat itched while I tried to break away from his grip. I needed to get to my gun now or never.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re going?” Kanan roared as he grabbed me by my hair.

  “Fuck you! Get the fuck off me!” I boomed, feeling blood rushing to places on my body that I didn’t know even existed. I bucked my body wildly, but all of my fighting efforts were to no avail. Of course Kanan was stronger than me. Of course I wasn’t going to be able to break free, but it just made me feel slightly better inside to try. I never dreamed of going out of this life on my feet. I had always been a fighter, so today wasn’t any different. I planned to live up to that name before I died.

  Kanan wrapped a handful of my hair around his fist and started tugging on it really hard. I caught an instant migraine and I couldn’t shake him for the life of me.

  “Let my hair go,” I screamed, while I continued to buck wildly and we both fell down to the floor. And when I looked in the direction where my gun was, I realized that I was only a few feet away from it. But that didn’t matter, because as soon as we hit the floor, Kanan had regained control by getting back on his feet. Without notice, he began dragging me toward the back door of the kitchen.

  I started kicking my feet at him like I had completely lost my mind. I struck him a few times by kicking him in his leg. That didn’t sit well with him and he made it known.

  “Bitch, you better bring your ass on out of here,” he hissed through clenched teeth as he dragged me roughly out of the house. He held a tight grip on my hair and I felt something at the base of my skull come loose. I was dazed for a few seconds, but not for long. I was brought back to reality when I felt a boot slam into my ribs before he threw me in the backseat of a truck. The force was so great that I spurted out a mouthful of blood.

  I could barely see through the tears pouring from my eyes. But I was able to make out Juice’s silhouette scurrying by us with a shoe box of things in his hands. I knew what was inside when I first looked at it. Niggas always kept money, drugs, paraphernalia, and guns in shoe boxes. Shoe boxes were like their safes.

  “Help me put this bitch in the truck,” Kanan instructed Juice, referring to an old, dark blue Ford Expedition SUV that was parked on the side of the duplex. Juice sat the shoe box on the front seat of the truck and helped Kanan lift me in the air and toss me into the backseat. Kanan slammed the door, rushed around the truck, and climbed in from the other side. Juice climbed in the front passenger seat and placed the shoe box on his lap.

  While Kanan was patting his pockets to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything on the way out of the house, I looked around for Trevor. He was nowhere to be found. “What did you do with Trevor?” I asked the guy named Preech. He was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “He’s all the way in the fucking back,” Preech spat.

  “You got him thrown back there like he’s fucking trash,” I screamed. My body was racked with the shakes.

  “I ain’t gon’ tell you to shut up again!” Kanan warned me.

  “Whatcha gon’ throw me in the back of the truck too?” I snapped. I wasn’t backing down.

  WHAM! The force and pain from Kanan’s fist slammed into the side of my face. I fell back against the window on the opposite side of the truck. “Didn’t I say shut the fuck up?!” he roared.

  I couldn’t react in any manner whatsoever after Kanan struck me with his fist. I sat up in the seat and eased as close as I could to the passenger-side door. I held my face with my hand, hoping it would ease my pain while I turned to look out the window. I watched as we drove away from the duplex. I even got a chance to look in the direction where Trevor’s Jeep was but it was gone. I exhaled with a sense of relief, knowing that Quincy was somehow able to get away.

  We drove out of the Huntersville neighborhood and headed up Tidewater Drive toward I-264. Before Preech could take the ramp onto the highway, Kanan instructed him to go around the loop and take the underpass. I was on high alert after Preech took the detour. I sat up even more in the seat. I braced myself for what was about to happen. If only I had my freaking gun.

  “Pull over here right here,” Kanan told Preech.

  “I thought you were taking me to Matt,” I blurted out while Preech drove us through the dimly lit underpass.

  “I am,” he replied.

  “So why are we coming here?” I continued questioning, while I tried to collect my thoughts. It seemed like everything in my head was going in a circular motion. I couldn’t get things to make sense. And when the truck came to a complete stop, my heart collapsed. It felt like I was no longer breathing.

  “Juice, help Preech get that nigga outta here. And when y’all done, Preech, finish him off,” Kanan said, cold and calculating.

  Knowing Kanan had just instructed Preech to take Trevor’s life sent a shock wave through my entire body. It felt like I was about to hyperventilate. I wanted to scream but I knew that it could possibly cost me my life, so I sat there and screamed in my head while I watched Preech and Juice carry out Kanan’s orders.

  When the hatchback of the SUV opened, I turned around in my seat and watched as they dragged Trevor by his arms and legs like he was a bag of dirty laundry and dropped him down on the ground. Preech pulled his pistol from his waist, aimed it at Trevor’s head, and then he pulled the trigger. BOOM! BOOM!

  Tears sprang to my eyes immediately and I could feel my heart crumbling to a million little pieces in my chest. My head started pounding like somebody was using it for a drum. My stomach swirled with nausea. Before I knew it, Juice had closed the hatchback and they were both back inside the truck. The darkness of the night nearly made it impossible for me to see Trevor’s lifeless body as Preech sped off. The orange shirt he wore illuminated the dark. The images of how badly he was beaten stuck in my head while we were leaving him behind. He didn’t deserve to be beaten and killed like that. I didn’t give a damn what he did. These motherfuckers I was with were some coldhearted bastards and I would make it my mission to end their pathetic-ass lives.

  “I wonder how long it’s gonna take for someone to find his ass?” Juice joked.

  “Probably a day or so. ’Cause you know homeless people be hanging down there underneath that underpass,” Preech assumed.

  “And I say, who gives a fuck?! That nigga got what he was looking for coming up to our spot, knocking on the fucking door like he was looking for somebody. Because of him, we had to shut shop down. Do you know how much money we lost tonight because of that fucking maggot?” Kanan complained.

  “At least ten grand,” Juice said.

  “Nah, probably more like fifteen,” Preech chimed in.

  “Yeah, fifteen grand is the number I was thinking too. And that’s gon’ hurt us, being that this is the weekend and a lot of people got their checks. We gon’ have to set up shop somewhere else since we ain’t gon’ be able to go back to that spot for a while,” Kanan said.

  “They got a couple spots on C Avenue that we can set up in. They know the chick that lives there. She’ll let us work out of there for little or nothing,” Preech suggested.

  “You must be talking about that bitch Trina,” Juice blurted out.

  “Yeah, I’ve been dying to get over there with her. She could make us a lot of fucking money because she knows all the dope fiends,” Preech continued.

  “Well, I’ll talk to Matt about it when we get to the house and see what he says,” Kanan said.

  I couldn’t fucking believe it. All these niggas could talk about is how much dope they could’ve made if Trevor and I hadn’t come by and rained on their parade. Well, these niggas rained on my fuckin
g parade when they came to New York and disrupted my world. Fuck their drug-making money ambitions, I thought to myself. Shutting down trap houses and setting up new ones came with the fucking territory. These motherfuckers had just killed an innocent human being. So this karma shit would be coming back to greet these ungrateful motherfuckers!

  While these dumb-ass niggas continued to talk about frivolous shit, I tried to convince myself that this was all a dream. But when Kanan opened his mouth and told Preech to head over to where Matt was, I knew that everything going on around me was real. And it was all my fault. Damn! I shouldn’t have brought those kids into this. And now I’d have to wear his blood on my hands. Thankfully, Quincy got away. Because if he hadn’t, I’d be really feeling fucked up.

  I fumed the entire drive to where Matt was hiding out. Halfway there, Kanan threw a pillowcase over my head and dared me to take it off. “Take it off and you gon’ end up like your homeboy back under the underpass,” he threatened me.

  I sat there with the satchel-like pillowcase over my head as my imagination ran wild. I knew I was on my way to see Matt but how the meeting would go was beyond me. I mean, what could we talk about? I was outnumbered and I had no protection, so how was I going to get out of this? I surmised that I would be joining Trevor and my husband, Derek, soon enough.

  15

  THE MEETING

  Preech drove the SUV across the crunch of the gravel that popped under the tires until he came to a complete stop. Everyone inside the truck was quiet until Kanan spoke first. “Preech, help me with her while Juice go up to the front door.”

  My teeth began chattering uncontrollably. My body trembled as well because I knew that they knew the fate that awaited me. I immediately started praying in my head but the words weren’t really that clear to me. I knew then that I had started losing touch with reality.

  I couldn’t see anything but I knew that Kanan had gotten out of the truck first, after I heard the other back door close. So when the door on my side opened I got a burst of courage, snatched the pillowcase from my head, and started attacking Kanan and Preech. I had to send a message that I wouldn’t lie down easily for no one. I swung at Preech first because he was the closet to me. My fist connected the top of his left eyebrow and he wasn’t a happy camper at all. “This fucking bitch!” he huffed. He grabbed hold of my wrists and squeezed them so hard it made me buckle over at the waist. It felt like he shattered every bone in my wrist. “Ahhh,” I screamed, but I didn’t stop fighting. I couldn’t move my arms but I sure kicked and bucked my body like a wild animal being carried to slaughter after Preech and Kanan both snatched me from the backseat. “Grab her fucking legs,” Kanan demanded.

  “Get off of me! Agh! Get the fuck off of me!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I looked around me. It was dark and I saw nothing but we were deep in the middle of a freaking cornfield. I couldn’t make out my location but I knew today was going to be the last day of my life if I didn’t try to get away from these guys now.

  I jutted my foot out forcefully and kicked Preech in his side. He made a noise but he kept trying to contain me. My kick didn’t faze him but it sure did infuriate him.

  “Yo, I swear, I’m gonna kill this bitch myself!” Preech roared, pulling his gun from his waist.

  “No! Let Matt deal with her shit!” Kanan barked. Preech sucked his teeth and slowly put his gun away.

  “You’re one lucky bitch!” Preech boomed as he gritted on me.

  “Fuck you, nigga!” I spat.

  “Let’s get her the fuck inside so Matt can take this headache off our hands,” Kanan spoke as he dragged me through the tall grass toward an old, run-down house surrounded by a cornfield. I frantically looked around for landmarks that I could file away in my memory for later use.

  Immediately after I was carried inside the old house, the smell of old wood and cigars quickly assailed my nose and hit me in the gut. It felt like little people were standing in my stomach mixing up a witch’s brew. My stomach made a loud growling noise that could’ve awoken the dead. I guess that was the first time I realized I was starving.

  A few seconds later, I was led into the den area and dropped down onto the floor. I hit the floorboards hard. BOOM! I tried to scramble to the nearby run-down sofa but I was stopped in my tracks.

  A foot appeared out of nowhere. And when I looked up and saw that the foot belonged to Matt, I lost my train of thought. “I’ve been expecting you.” He smiled. It looked sinister. I couldn’t believe that I used to find him attractive. Now I saw him as this angry, bitter nigga with a bunch of fucking gray hairs growing out of his beard and the top of his head. He looked like a monster now. Correction, he was a monster now.

  My mind went totally blank until I heard a baby crying from a nearby room. I looked in the direction of the room and then I looked back at Matt. “Is that my baby?” I asked. Hearing my son’s voice was like music to my ears. Everything that I had gone through up until this point no longer mattered to me. All I wanted the whole time was to find out if my baby was alive, and now I knew that he was.

  I tried to stand up but Matt pushed me back down to the floor. “Where the fuck you think you going?” he huffed.

  “I wanna see my baby,” I told him.

  “Not until after we talk,” Matt continued.

  My mind raced in a zillion directions and my body felt tense and rigid as I looked around the room at Kanan, Preech, and Juice, who were standing nearby. I could tell that they were itching to do something to me. All they needed was for Matt to give them the word. “What is it?” I wondered aloud.

  “Help her up to that chair, right there,” Matt instructed Juice.

  When Juice reached for my arm, I snatched it back from him. “I got it,” I gritted.

  It took me less than three seconds to stand up from the floor and have a seat on the nearby sofa. “Comfortable?” he asked me.

  I let out a long sigh. “I’m good. Just tell me what you want. I wanna see my baby,” I spat.

  Matt took a metal chair from the other side of the room and placed it directly in front of me. He took a seat on it and looked directly into my eyes. “You know you short me a substantial amount of money, right?” he started off.

  “I had been gone for almost a year. What did you expect me to live on?” I tried to reason with him.

  “But that was my money,” he pointed out.

  “It was our money,” I reiterated.

  He got straight to the point. “Do you wanna walk out of here with your baby?”

  “You fucking right I do.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to give me the rest of my money.”

  “How am I going to do that when I’ve given you everything I had?”

  “You’re gonna have to do another score,” he told me. His facial expression was so serious that it was almost scary.

  “How do you expect me to do that?” I wondered aloud, more frustrated than anything.

  “You’re gonna have to pull off a bank heist.”

  “You want me to rob a damn bank? Are you out of your fucking mind?” I shrieked. It just came out of nowhere. It had bubbled up from the pit of my soul. The scream zapped all of my energy. How the hell was I going to do that? I knew this city would be crawling with cops looking for Trevor and me, especially since Quincy had gotten away. For all I knew, my face could be plastered all over the freaking news, and this moron wanted me to rob a fucking bank. Was he trying to set me up to go to jail and lose my baby altogether? Or was he just plain fucking stupid?

  “Nah, bitch, I ain’t out of my fucking mind. You were out of your mind when you ran off with my motherfucking bread. Do you want your son back?” he barked.

  “You fucking right!” I barked back. Was this a trick question or something?

  “Well, I want my money. So if I don’t get my money then you ain’t gon’ get your son,” he warned me.

  I wanted to tell Matt to go straight to hell but I knew that wouldn’t help me get any closer to get
ting my son back, or even getting a chance to see him. But before I agreed to his outlandish demand, I asked him what exactly I had to do. “You and Preech are going to go inside First Union Bank while Juice stays in the car. I want you to grab the bank manager and take her ass to the back of the bank and take as much money as you can while Preech watch all the tellers behind the counters. And when you’re done filling up the backpack, knock the bitch out, grab Preech, and then y’all get out of there.”

  “So we’re not taking any money from the tellers?” I asked. I needed clarity.

  “No. They don’t carry enough dough in their drawers. The only thing I want Preech to do is to make them hoes get on the floor as soon as y’all get in there so they don’t get a chance to hit the alarm.”

  “And you don’t think that we need a third man to help out. Preech isn’t going to be to watch everyone in the front of the bank. I mean, what if someone tries to come inside?” I asked. I was putting my life and my freedom on the line behind another fucking score. I needed all the inside information I could get, especially since it was only going to be a two-man job. Normally, for a job of this magnitude, it required you to have at least three to four people watching every angle so that the heist could be executed perfectly. But this nutcase standing in front of me had these unrealistic expectations that could get us railroaded for sure.

  Right before he answered me, my baby started crying like he had been struck at that very moment. As soon as I jumped to my feet, Matt blocked me from moving any farther. “I’m not done talking to you,” Matt said through clenched teeth. My eyes went wide.

  “I’m only trying to see what’s wrong with my son. Don’t you hear him crying?” I spat.

  Matt grabbed me by the neck and pushed me headfirst into the sofa. I crashed into it with my head and shoulders but I managed to catch my balance and turn around.