by Del James
"Sick Puppy" Copyright © 2010 by Del Janies
"A Revolution of One" Copyright © 2010 by Brian Keene
"Real Gun Control is Hitting What You Aim At"
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas F. Monteleone
"Testify" Copyright © 2010 by Lee Thomas
Cover Design Copyright © 2010 Desert Isle Design
Chapbook Design by Keith Minnion
This publication is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the authors' imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblence to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior permission of the authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
Cemetery Dance Publications
132-B Industry Lane
Unit 7
Forest Hill, MD 21050
[email protected]
www.cemeterydance.com
CEMETERY DANCE PUBLICATIONS
Baltimore
2010
SICK PUPPY
Del James
5
A REVOLUTION OF ONE
Brian Keene
17
REAL GUN CONTROL IS
HITTING WHAT YOU AIM AT
Thomas F. Monteleone
21
TESTIFY
Lee Thomas
25
When the first hijacked airplane crashed into World Trade Center building number two, 24,000 gallons of jet fuel created a 2,000 degree Fahrenheit inferno. Destructive flames weakened steel supports until the top twenty floors collapsed on the ninety floors below. This horror show repeated itself when another hijacked 767 struck World Trade Center building number one.
Glued to my television, back when I owned a television, I watched in numb disbelief. So did the rest of the country as over a million tons of debris littered Lower Manhattan. Windows blew out in jagged explosions. Street lamps uprooted like dead trees. Toxic clouds wafted eerily above the crippled city.
Two thousand eight hundred twenty three people lost their lives on that fateful morning. Residents that did not suffer direct personal losses knew families who had. The financial damage to NYC tallied 36 billion dollars. That figure included the destruction of the World Trade Center complex and neighboring buildings, damage to structures, equipment, and subway lines.
Not too surprisingly, a President that no one liked declared war on the wrong country and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do except watch and take it all in.
I turned twenty-four last week. Libra. No cards from friends who are too broke to buy me a present. No chocolate cake with my name scripted in frosting. No blowing out the candles with loved ones, and the first motherfucker who says something brilliant like "well, you brought this situation upon yourself" is going to get hit.
Few things get under my skin more than someone trying to save me from myself. Yes I am fully aware that I am a creation of my own carelessness and had I acted more responsibly none of this would have happened. Whatever. It's too late to go back. Some situations spiral from fucked up to beyond comprehensible. Then there are other times when shit just happens.
Bad shit of course.
I started getting high long before the 9/11 attacks. Hell, I started getting high before I lost my virginity. Weed and beer at fourteen became LSD and pills in less than a year. Gateway drugs...sounds like a retail chain where I'm a loyal customer as well as a shoplifter.
For anyone wondering why I went down this lethal path, let me rule out some of the textbook reasons and misconceptions. I wasn't trying to escape from reality or cope with the hardships of working-class existence. Neither parent abused me nor were there any traumatic experiences that forever scarred my psyche. I wasn't genetically pre-disposed, as both of my parents are responsible and drug-free members of society. I just loved getting loaded and with every dopamine discovery, every brand new not-so-original sin, I sought another. I was an insatiable teenage experiment of endurance and excess. If boundaries were meant to be pushed, then I was born to shove.
"Hey kid, come 'ere."
White powder appears.
White powder disappears up my nose.
That white powder is not cocaine.
The worst thing anyone can do to another human being is pop their heroin cherry. Everything changes after you get introduced to the high that trumps every other high. That's not to say that I stopped smoking reefer, drinking, popping different colored pills, rolling, tripping my face off and snorting blow; or for that matter even slowed down when those substances were available. I'm just saying that there was another addictive and lethal ingredient on my voracious menu. Shit, certain drugs will siphon the bebop out of a saxophone so imagine what they can do to someone like me?
The thing about being loaded all the time is you're constantly on the go go go, running from here to there and getting into insane situations that, unless you've lived through the chaos, makes no sense to "normies." I stewed in my own bullshit, reveling in my self-inflicted misery while waiting for it to all magically change. Absurd, right? The reality provided by hindsight is that a lot of your effort is misdirected, pointless, and well, utterly forgettable. Stupid-ass shit like trying to get rich without working or selling stuff that isn't yours. Or arguing over the quality of what was promised versus what got delivered with an armed and dangerous individual, which is pretty fucking retarded.
One year blurred into another and before I knew it I was no longer a teenager. I was a young man although most people thought I looked older than what my driver's license stated. I did a lot of things I'm not particularly proud of. I did a lot of shit I can't quite remember but then again my memory has always been somewhat selective. Like I know I was in certain places at certain times but I can't always remember with whom. Or I'll remember certain events but specific details are missing.
One night changed my life forever. Most of the details are fuzzy.
I remember copping drugs in a dangerous neighborhood. So dangerous in fact that most cops will not write you a ticket for running a red light. They would rather have you break the law and keep moving than get carjacked. I remember being warned by my dealer that this batch was some potent shit and to be careful. Of course every shifty slinger will give you the same spiel, "this is the shit that killed Cobain" or "this stuff took Chris Farley down." It's a sales pitch. And maybe subconsciously it's also a way for the mad hatter not to feel responsible if his customer croaks. "Hey man, I warned the dude to be careful but you think he listened?"
So I did a taste and the dealer wasn't lying. Problem was I did my fix in said dangerous neighborhood where running red lights is a survival mechanism. But I wasn't in a car...I was on foot and fading fast. And should I happen to nod out before reaching my subway station, best-case scenario had some street urchins stealing my sneakers and jacket.
No best-case scenario for me.
I woke up in a puddle of my own coagulation. One eye turned purple and was swollen shut. My clothes were all torn up but at least I still had my shoes. Stained but on my feet nevertheless. Whoever did this to me moved so quickly that I never saw them coming nor did I have time to swing back before the crimson began to fly. My crimson. Everywhere.
I'd been sliced up pretty badly. Whoever jacked me really got off on slashing. Some gashes went deeper than o
thers. Wet flesh dangling off my torso, and when I tried packing it back into place other wounds seeped open.
Another thought crossed my aching head.
I checked my pants pockets.
My dope was gone.
Sirens. Gurney. Paramedics.
I spent the next few weeks in a hospital bed. Resembling a shark attack victim, my stitch count was astronomical. With the way I'd been worked over, the doctors couldn't believe that no vital organs had been pierced.
I attributed my recovery to not having any illegal substances in my system. Detoxing in a hospital bed was the reason I was getting healthy. Between the agony I was in from getting hacked up and the painkillers they were giving me for those injuries, my dope sickness came and went. Unlike other times when I tried kicking on my own, I had nurses ready with all sorts of remedies should I need them.
And yes I did.
With each passing day I felt a little better. My appetite eventually returned. My scars healed to an acceptable imperfection. They weren't gone, just no longer hideous. Bruises faded back to flesh tone.
Well-meaning nurses looked down on me with concern. They knew that as soon as I was better, I'd be back doing the Devil's bidding. They never allowed their eyes to betray them entirely because that would be unprofessional, but when you've lain in a hospital bed for a long period of time, you become a half-assed expert in human behavior. You can read the little nuances in the way someone asks you a question. You know whether they really care or just feel obligated to make small talk. I could detect that slight flinch where, despite being covered by protective rubber gloves, a nurse hesitates in making physical contact with me.
As my healing process continued, the hospital bed that I'd spent so much time on was no longer comforting, just restrictive. Old habits die hard; thus my mind returned to drugs. I mean, fuck, I'm in a hospital, right? This is like a storage center for all sorts of highly potent goodness and someone needs to hook me up. But they didn't. They just gave me what I needed but not necessarily what I wanted. With all of the nurses and doctors constantly checking in on me, I could not go an hour without thinking about getting high. Like Elvis sang, "you are always on my mind," and the better I felt, the more my mind fucked me.
Breaking out of a hospital is not difficult at all. It's not like jail. If you arrive at an Emergency Room and you're injured, the law states that they have to admit you. No one, not even illegal aliens, can be denied treatment. Even if they can't afford it. If you wind up in a private hospital, they might shuffle you over to a general hospital but eventually you'll be treated. Bleeding or suffering from pneumonia or in some sort of obvious pain will always get you a hospital bed. By that logic, if you're in an infirmary where the doctors are not making any money by treating you, no one is going to keep you there longer than necessary. Forget about filling out paperwork. I just needed to disappear and skip out on whatever medical bill they wanted to hit me with.
I did not feel bad about not saying goodbye to my caregivers.
I was feeling something else.
Something stirred inside of me. Anxious and turbulent, with each passing minute my intensity increased, like I needed to do something but there was nothing really on my agenda. Users get this way when they crave. You start spinning until your mind convinces you that nothing will ever be right unless you get high. Take the edge off. You can handle it this time. All kinds of encouraging voices inside my head. All making promises. All telling lies.
Next thing I know I'm heading to the drug spot to look around with exactly enough money to cop a bag. One bag never killed anybody. My drug strut told other street people that I was not a narc. Watchful of my surroundings, I put on my game face. I didn't want to get busted during a sweep or catch a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. After all, this was my first day back on the streets.
As fucked up as it is out here, I love it. Trash overflowing, malt liquor ads, streetwalkers, stripped cars on cinder blocks, and trigger-happy gangbangers are all very comforting when beauty is in the stoned eye of the beholder. Illegible graffiti decorating doors, walls, and anything else that could be tagged, urban decay contains a certain panache that most civilians will never understand.
About a half-year prior, a gun-toting addict named Levester began jacking customers around the drug spot. If word hit the street that this place was hazardous, buyers would take their business elsewhere. An unofficial union of no-nonsense dealers banded together. They caught the creep and took him up to the housing project roof. Whether Levester thought he could escape by flying or got thrown over the edge remains uncertain, but the dealers effectively guaranteed safe passage to and from the drug spot.
Looking over that red brick building, I saw a full moon. Quite possibly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen but my serenity didn't last very long.
Pain.
Very sharp pain.
Pulsating and ripping.
Spreading everywhere.
This was a different pain than any drug pains I had ever experienced. Withdrawal now fell into the category of minor discomfort. This was some monumental, balls-to-the-wall agony.
Big toes reversing, my growing ankles began to rise unnaturally. Unbearable agony shooting through my morphing limbs. Cartilage and tendons extended into new varieties. Muscles I didn't even know I had stretched excruciatingly as if they were growing on some form of instantaneous super steroid. Electrified nerve endings throbbed on full alert. I could feel "pops" occurring underneath my flesh.
My now very hairy flesh.
My shoulder blades narrowed, allowing my arms to act as another set of legs, which was a good thing since my hands were no longer hands. Same with my feet for they too became...paws. Paws with sharp, lethal claws.
As this unrelenting suffering consumed my entire physical being, I felt myself losing more and more of my mental faculties. Jaws enlarged, my canine teeth protruded out of my bleeding gums, quadrupling my bite strength. The further my sharp teeth extended, the more I wanted to test them on something.
Face elongated and unable to keep my teeth inside my frothing mouth, my thoughts jumbled into an unsolvable puzzle. The definitions of words that I had known all my life were now scrambled. Communication was out of the question. All I had was instinct.
Animalistic instinct to go with my animalistic strength.
Disorientation and primal rage...I felt like running. I felt like charging as fast as I could directly into things...into people. I wanted to fight them. I wanted to test my jaw strength on their faces. I wanted to sink my claws deep into their flesh and pull out warm organs to find out how they tasted.
Crazy.
Craving.
The drug spot. Must get to the drug spot.
Sticking close to the shadows, I entered the projects. Even for someone with limited cerebral capabilities, it wasn't too hard to spot the dealers standing outside of a slum building. Baggy pants, hoodies, and baseball caps being worn every which way except for the way that a hat is supposed to be worn. Tonight there were three of them, all about seventeen years of age and eager to make fast money.
"Yo B, check it out!"
All eyes fell on me and judging their expressions, a cop would have been more welcome.
A long stream of drool.
A deep throaty growl.
One of the punks went for his pistol. This sudden movement caused me to charge. I didn't give any thought to what he was about to do or what the consequences might be. It was pure action-reaction.
Before he managed to get off a shot, I was on top of him.
Six foot and feral, I tore him open with unstoppable savagery. Blood splashing everywhere, his desperate pleas meant nothing to me. Then the screaming stopped. My destructive urge felt somewhat satiated but not entirely. That's when I heard the other two teens running away. One ran to the left. The other took off to the right. There was no way I could catch both of them so I settled for lefty. He was the bigger of the two. More meat.
I could hea
r his expensive sneakers slapping against the cement, trying to evade me. Louder and louder as I got closer. No matter how much he paid for those slick basketball shoes there was no escape.
After ripping him apart, I let out a war cry announcing that the baddest motherfucker in the ghetto had arrived. For a brief moment, the city fell silent. It was as if I had everybody's undivided attention, which was not a particularly good thing since I was covered in blood.
Away. Must get away from the drug spot.
Must get home.
I woke up disoriented. Memory fragments. Did any of that really happen or was I hallucinating? Could I be suffering from some sort of posttraumatic stress disorder? A series of possibilities as to why I had awakened in the basement of my apartment building, naked, and covered in blood rushed through my frazzled mind. This wasn't the first time that I'd blacked out at the drug spot.
One elevator ride...One claustrophobic little elevator ride with no other passengers. That's all I needed to be back in the safety of my apartment. And please let the key still be hidden underneath my doormat.
No other passengers. The key was still there. I stole a newspaper from a neighbor before going inside.
The newspaper reported the slaughter at the drug building. The Trinitarios, a ferocious street gang with a reputation for machete violence, were suspected in the double homicide, although there were no witnesses. Even if there had been, no one would come forward. Snitches get stitches.
As I stepped into the shower to wash away the crimson evidence, I noticed something on my pale chest.
A lesion.
Derived from the Latin word laesio which means injury, lesions are caused by any process that damages healthy tissue: tumors, bums, Chicken Pox. A person's skin is the most commonly affected organ associated with human immune deficiency virus and ninety percent of people with HIV experience some sort of skin change as a symptom of the disease. Purplish lesions are nature's way of marking the damned.
