Trapnights

by AP Jermaine

  “You lil bitch ass niggas!” Fletch growled down at us. “What the fuck you motherfu…” WHAM!!! His profane words were cut short by the butt of the 32. revolver as I smashed it into his teeth! I was still clinging angrily to vivid memories of how he nearly choked me to death, then smashed in my nose just a few days earlier. Quick as a cheetah Shell was behind me brandishing the huge hunting knife he’d stolen from Dick’s Sporting Goods earlier that day. “You motherfuckers!” Fletch spit blood. “I’m gonna ki…!” Fletch hissed up from the floor, before being cut short again as I pounced on him like a mad man! Slamming the gun into his head and face time and time again until Shell pulled me off him!

  “Chill out Banks! You gonna kill the motherfucker!” Shell yelled at me as I stared down at Fletch, with his beaten, battered, and bloody face. It wasn’t until years later that I sat and watched the “GoodFellas” scene, where Ray Liotta beat the shit outta that cornball for fuckin with his girl. I remember thinking damn, that looks like me. Ironic. It was a perfect reenactment. Laying on the floor now, with his face one big bloody lump; Fletch didn’t look so big and cocky anymore. Shell reached down and pulled a gun from his pants. It was chrome. And big! I knew this nigga Fletch had some money. In fact, here he was, a no class lame ass clown, staying in Hope Valley. Hope Valley was the kind of area where your next-door neighbor might own a McDonald’s. People in that area had that type bread. Not all, but most. His house sat back off the road, with a considerable amount of land on both sides. The nearest house was at least a football field away. He liked his privacy. During the fifteen minutes that it took Fletch to regain consciousness, we’d duck taped his feet, mouth, and hands. His sudden wiggling and moaning, alerted me that he was awake. Over the last three days, Shell and I had been over this plan at least a hundred times. So as soon as I gave him the nod, Shell leaned in, cutting a small slit in the tape over Fletches mouth. He could speak now, but barely. We’d taped his mouth with it open. Never having done anything that was even close to this before, naturally we were both nervous! Thankfully my hatred for this nigga helped overcome my fear, and now all I wanted to do was hurt this motherfucker who’d terrorized my girl for years! No sooner than Shell had cut the slit in the tape, did this nigga start flippin!

  “You lil faggot niggas gone die!” He groaned. I could tell by his slurred speech that he was hurt bad, as I kneeled down and pressed the barrel of my gun to his head.

  “I know you got money here Fletch. That’s all we want.” I had to have the money so I could move Tika away from this nigga. Word on the street was that he was some kind of self-proclaimed millionaire. All I needed was a lil bit of that, then I could change things. I was already past the point of no return. I’d laid and broken into the home of a notoriously deadly drug dealer, waited on him, beat the living shit out of him, and was now knelt down beside him, looking at him bashed, bruised, and bloody, duct taped up on his own fuckin living room floor! I gots to leave here wit some paper!

  “Fuck you!” Fletch growled. “I aint giving you shit! Dead men can’t spend no money no way! You know that’s what yall is don’t you! Two dead lil niggas!” Fletch hawked up from his throat before using all the strength he could master to spit clotted blood and mucus into my face! With unchained fury, I snatched the hunting knife from Shell’s hand, and slammed it down to the handle into his right ass cheek! I felt a hard clink, encountering resistance as the tip of the knife hit bone! And I pushed harder! The screams that came from within him through his partially taped mouth, only served to increase my hunger to hurt him. He was either in a lot of pain, or he was trying to wake the dead! Unfortunately for him, he liked his privacy a little too much. No one was listening. No one was coming. Slowly I eased a little pressure off the knife, and suddenly his screams turned to breathless words. “Ahhhh! Ahhh! It’s in….! It’s…! Oh god, get a doctor!” I pushed down even harder! “Ahhhhh! It’s in the freezer!” Snatching the blade out with a low sucking sound, I was surprised at how little the knife wound bled.

  “Shell, go look and see if it’s a freezer in the kitchen.” Quickly Shell abandoned the window he was peeking out of and stumbled across the living room into the kitchen! Fletch continued to moan and say things I couldn’t comprehend. I figured he might be a little dizzy.

  “Yeah it’s a freezer in here but it’s got a lock on it!” Shell yelled from the kitchen. Up until this point I’d never heard of people keeping money in the freezer. So, for a second I wondered, if Fletch was trying to buy himself some more time. I snatched the bloody blade up off the floor, and this time the mere sight of it caused Fletches speech to become coherent!

  “In my pocket! Keys in my back pocket!” Fletch screamed with terror in his eyes. Digging into the bloody back pocket of his silk slacks, I retrieved a set of keys. Fletch screamed out in pain when my hand brushed across his knife wound.

  “Which one is it?” I flashed the blade again.

  “The one, the one with the “F” on it.” He huffed out.

  Leaving him laying right where he was, I dashed into the kitchen, straight to the freezer. At first I couldn’t find the key, and then, there it was. An “F,” stamped into the key so small that you wouldn’t know it was there unless you were looking for it. Sliding the key in the hole, I turned it with a soft click, then opened the deep freezer with a loud creak. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Fletch was still in place. He still lay moaning and babbling. The freezer was full of meats, fruits and vegetables but no money. Instantly enraged, I was just about to go back and inflict some more pain on Fletch for bullshittin me, when Shell pushed a box of frozen peas to the side, and there it was. At the bottom of the freezer, wrapped in clear blue plastic, were four small stacks of money. There were numbers written in black magic marker on each. Three of them had fives, and the other had a ten written on the plastic. Taking an educated guess, I figured the numbers to represent thousands. Twenty - five thousand dollars. A far cry from a million, but we all know how the streets love to exaggerate. Aint nothing new about bullshit gossip in the streets. Quickly I tossed the money out to Shell, who immediately dropped it in the Fila duffle bag we’d brought with us. I was far from satisfied, but still ready to get the fuck up outta there, when from the corner of my eye, I saw something that immediately struck me as out of place. It was a large Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket that was taped all the way around the lid. I reached down and pulled if from the bottom of the freezer, leaving steaks and vegetables tumbling everywhere. “Come on man! We gotta get the fuck outta here!” Shell fidgeted nervously while I felt no fear. I probably should have, but I guess my hatred wouldn’t let me. Walking back to the living room, I snatched up the bloody knife and cut a hole into the lid of the chicken box. Instantly I saw green. Weed! The bucket felt heavy for some tree but I figured it was probably because it was frozen. I tossed the bucket into the bag and Shell damn near dropped it before regaining his composure. Hauling ass, we ran outta the kitchen past a beaten, battered, and broken Fletch. I knew I’d have to deal with this nigga sooner or later, but that was something I’d have to deal with when the time came. He was beat and cut the fuck up, but he’d live. At least I thought he might, until time seemed to stand still, as my scared ass homeboy Shell, turned, kneeled down beside Fletch, and sent two thunderous rounds through the back of his head, sending blood and brain splashing all over the carpet! My heart skipped a beat. And at that very moment, I knew that my childhood was over. No longer could I run back to school; ducking class and smoking trees while trying to keep my dick up in somebody’s daughter. Everybody knows high school is a teenager’s playground for pussy. The hanging out at the mall on Saturdays, eating pizza and shopping for new kicks, all the stupid things teenagers get to do without worry or care, that I took for granted, were over for me. I had a painful feeling that I’d miss all that. There was no turning back now. Now we were men. I vividly remember my last thought before we ran out of the house as, “Mama’s gonna kill me!”

  Chapter 9 “BLOW”


  “How much is that?” I asked.

  “You got just under four.”

  “Four? Four what? Ounces? Oh, hell no motherfucker! You must think I’m crazy!” My temper started to rise as I stared across at the nigga sitting across from me. I didn’t really know much about cocaine, but the coke we’d discovered, wrapped up beneath the tree in the KFC bucket, I knew felt heavy enough to be at least eight ounces. At least! I was eager to get this transaction over with. I already had some dough, and even more pressing plans that I needed to carry out. I was yet to come to grips with the killing of a man. Taking a life. Playing God. But it was over now, and I was only left with two choices. Get up and live, or lay down and die. Just like him. Fuck that! I’m a survivor. He deserved to die. We stashed the money, as we waited a few days to see what might happen. No sense in going bananas with the money if we were gonna need it for our jail commissary. We hadn’t heard shit. There was a very small write up in the Durham Herald, where they’d actually talked more about his extensive criminal past, than his untimely death. They’d chalked it up as a drug deal gone bad. Another dead nigga. No big deal. Good riddance. Now, after a week and three days, we were here trying to sell this coke off cheap, and this nigga was yet still trying to play us! Niggas and flies. One eats shit the other tells lies. “So you trying to tell me, that ain’t but four ounces right there?” I tried to look and sound confident although I could sense that he knew I was desperate. Shell reached under his shirt, where I knew his pistol lay hidden. I hoped like hell he didn’t start shooting! He had a different look in his eye since murdering Fletch. At times, I felt like I didn’t know who he was anymore. But it was him. Just out there on a natural high since blowing a motherfuckers’ brains out!

  “Man hell no that ain’t four ounces! That’s four bricks! Four kilos my niggas.” He reiterated as I thought for a second I’d heard him wrong. The nigga I was talking to was named Hood. I was thinking maybe he’d seen Shell’s pistol and was lying to try and ease the tension of the situation. “The blow just compressed bru. I can probably call my man and get y’all fifteen thousand a piece. That’s sixty thousand.”

  “What!” I was excited and scared at the same time. Excited by the mention of all that money, and scared about the fact of knowing that if Hood tried to snake me, he’d be the next one murdered. We already had the twenty - five thousand stashed in the woods beside the graveyard on Miami Blvd. If what dude was spitting was true, that would be ninety thousand dollars! What the hell was we gonna do with all that money! “How long will it take you to get back wit us after you see your man?” I asked Hood.

  “Meet me at Miami Subs on Hillsborough Rd. tomorrow at nine o’clock. I should have the bread then.”

  I was hoping like hell we could trust this cat. Hood was one of Shell’s sister Latonya’s boyfriends, and Shell felt like the nigga was solid. I knew Latonya was a slut. Everybody did. But I trusted Shell. So that’s why we were trusting this nigga. “We’ll be there. But don’t bring nobody with you. We don’t wanna meet nobody.” Shell nodded in agreement. Immediately after, we stood and went our separate ways, waiting to see what story the next day would tell. Later that night we went and dug up the twenty-five thousand. Like I’d said, to the police Fletch was just another dead nigger drug dealer. The coast was clear. We split the money twelve five a piece, before dapping each other up and agreeing to meet up the next night. I knew Shell had something on his mind but he still wouldn’t talk about it. He would when he was ready I guessed. After stopping by my house to let my moms know I was alive, I showered, changed clothes, then hopped in a cab over to Tika’s. Right before I’d left the crib, my moms had said something about Tika’s mothers’ boyfriend getting killed. I brushed it off like I hadn’t heard, and hit the door running! Everybody knows, that if anybody can tell when you’re lying like a motherfucker, it’s your mom dukes. Mama was all I had. I hadn’t seen my pops since I was three. To me, he didn’t exist. Mama worked two jobs, so I was at home alone a lot. She tried her best to keep track of me but it was damn near impossible. I don’t know if she had a boyfriend or not. On some rare occasions, she’d stay out all night. Always informing me that she was going out with her girlfriends and to behave myself. One thing for sure, she never brought no niggas up in our crib. And for that, I respected her to the utmost. Shell’s mama Ms. Tina was the exact opposite. She kept some bum running in and out of their crib. One day it was one nigga; the next day it was another. And the beat goes on and on. When I got to Tika’s crib, Ms. Samantha answered the door. I could tell she’d been crying. The only thing she said to me was, “Tika’s upstairs in her room,” before walking away leaving the door standing wide open. I came in, closed the door behind me, and headed upstairs. As soon as I stepped into the room, Tika rushed up to me throwing her arms around my neck, before ecstatically raining kisses, all over my face with glee! You’d think that she hadn’t seen me in years, by her excited and clingy behavior!

  “I’m sorry Teddy! Please don’t hate me!” She begged as tears ran down her cheeks. I hadn’t told her shit, but I knew she had to suspect that I was behind Fletches death. Strangely she felt like everything that’d happened was somehow all her fault.

  “I ain’t mad at you Tika. I don’t hate you neither, so quit talking that crazy shit, come over here and sit down.” I reassured her as I pulled her down next to me on the bed. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out one hundred, one hundred dollar bills. Almost half the money we’d taken from Fletches freezer. Tika’s eyes almost popped outta her head! “Here, I want you to take this. It’s for you and your moms to move outta these projects.”

  “Oh my god Teddy! How much is it?” Tika beamed as she’d accepted the money from my -outstretched hand.

  “It’s ten thousand. Tell your mama I won it gambling. Tell her I’ll have some more but I probably won’t make it back over here till tomorrow.

  “Thank you Teddy! Oh, my god, thank you!” Again, Tika threw her arms around my neck and cried. I actually had to pry her arms from around my neck as I got up to leave.

  “I love you Tika.” It was the first time I’d ever said that to a woman, or girl for that matter. It felt weird, but I knew it was true.

  “I love you too Teddy. Hurry up back.” Tika smiled wiping angry tears.

  “I will baby. I will.”

  Chapter10 “Grinding”

  The next night, me and Shell pulled up to the Waffle House on Hillsborough Rd. at eight o’clock. The Waffle House was probably about two or three hundred feet from Miami Subs, which was perfect. From where we sat in Shell’s moms beat up Ford Tempo, we had a bird’s eye view of the entire Miami Subs parking lot. We showed up an hour early to have time to lay and watch. Just in case Hood was playing pussy, and wanted to get fucked by showing up on some snake shit. We’d also brought along some of the tree we’d taken from Fletches freezer, to smoke out and calm our nerves while we waited and observed. The tree turned out to be some flame! By the time we watched Hood pull up in Miami Subs at eight-thirty, we were high as a motherfucker and ready to handle business. Patiently we watched as Hood stepped out of a Honda Accord wagon, and headed into the food joint. Looking around cautiously, he quickly made his way to the back, took a seat in a booth and picked up a menu. He didn’t look shook and he didn’t have anybody with him, so at nine o’clock we pulled across the street, got out and went in.

  “Yo bru, I tried my best with them thangs but we got a problem now.” Hood confessed as we slid in the booth across from him. This definitely wasn’t the shit we were trying to hear. And tonight; I won’t having it! I was all set to crank up and rip into Hoods scheming ass, when Shell pulled out what I now knew, was his shiny Desert Eagle .45 and placed it on the table.

  “What kinda problems you talking bout nigga?” Shell’s voice dripped venom. “If you think you about to shit us, and walk outta here alive, then think again nigga!” It was Shell who’d said we could trust this nigga to have the bread tonight, and now this shit! Hell no! It was a
good thing that Miami Subs was packed and filled with noisy customers. Nobody noticed Shell’s gun laying on the table pointed at Hood’s chest. “I’m not stupid like my sister motherfucker!” Shell snarled as he reached up and ratcheted a bullet into the chamber.

  Hood’s eyes stretched like a deer caught in the headlights, and his hands shook like leaves on a tree as he threw them up in defense! “Wait! Wait a minute Shell! It ain’t that kind of problem!” Hood’s trembling voice pleaded! “Everything is still good. It’s just that my man I told you about, got bagged by the FEDS last week on a gun charge. I had to go another route and I couldn’t get off but three of em. I got forty - five thousand, and one brick left outside in the car.” Hood seemed exhausted after he pushed all that out in one breath. Everybody knows that the streets talk. Word had already gotten around that we were the ones who’d offed Fletch. Fletch was dead and we had bricks to burn. Calculation in street terminology. Our stomachs were growling and niggas knew we had killed to be able to eat. Hood and any other street nigga knows to play it straight with a nigga wit an itchy trigger finger. Rules to the game.

  “Why the fuck you didn’t just say that to start with nigga!” I asked Hood as Shell pulled his gun off the table and rested it in his lap.