Page 17 of Phoenix
“Dude, you need to lose some fucking weight,” I laugh at him while he huffs, curses, and then gives me the finger.
“Watch it, kid,” he growls, but with no real intent behind it, “I got plenty of bullets to pop at them, as well as a cheeky motherfucking puppy who needs to learn his manners.”
“Yeah right, fat boy, I could outrun you without even breaking a sweat!”
He grumbles as he shuffles up the gravel driveway, muttering threats he has no intention of following through with.
“Jesus Christ, and I thought my place was a dump!” Charlie looks around the front yard, which is littered with old furniture, dirty clothes, and about three weeks’ worth of garbage. The place looks like a fly-tippers paradise and one step away from releasing a global pandemic. Charlie adds to the flavor of the place by spitting his obnoxious phlegm out the side of his mouth where it hits the stone step with a slow ooze. I grimace, though he doesn’t notice, he’s already trying to break inside using a credit card that’s probably older than I am. He starts grunting at his failure to get the thing open as easily as he thought he would.
“Fuck’s sake!” He grits through his teeth before I put my hand over the handle and try turning the fucker. As luck would have it, the people inside are so brain-dead from an over-reliance on narcotics just to function through life, it opens. “You have got to be kidding me?!” Charlie huffs and then looks at me as if to warn me not to even think about saying anything. I choose my battles and just smirk arrogantly, causing him to roll his eyes before marching his big butt inside.
“Jeez!” I throw my hand over my nose and wave the rancid air in front of me while Charlie begins wrapping his scarf around the lower half of his face. The place is like a squatter’s hovel, only much worse. The kitchen standing to our left is full of dirty dishes and overflowing ashtrays. Fat runs down the walls and onto an oven hob that has clearly never been cleaned. In front of us, the living room is covered in dirty sheets and even more clothes than outside on the front lawn. There’s an overwhelming smell of stale urine and a faint whiff of human feces. Dirty cups and scattered plates line any surface available while the floor is covered with the remnants of drugs and used needles.
“Fucking pigs!” Charlie scoffs, picking up what looks like a walking stick to nudge away the detritus all over the floor. He clears a pathway for us to navigate through, being careful not to touch anything for fear of being infected by all the shit that’s lying around.
I follow him toward the bedrooms out back, walking past a vacant bathroom before we reach there. The distinct buzzing of flies gathering around the fog of something that smells like it died weeks ago can be heard over the otherwise silent house. We look at each other as soon as we notice a human leg poking out the side of what looks like a bed in a room at the far end of the hall.
Once inside that bedroom, we look before us to see a man and a woman, clearly both out of it given their facial expressions and the drug paraphernalia scattered around them. Both look like they’ve been dying of cancer for a good long while, given that they are nothing but grey skin and bone.
“Ese?!” Charlie calls out to the man, whose head lulls around from side to side over his wrinkled neck. It’s hard to tell but I would hazard a guess that he’s in his forties and was once a tall, most likely broad guy, and easy on the eye. Now he’s nothing but a skeleton with dark, sunken eyes, and premature bald patches.
“Ese!” Charlie shouts again, being about as patient as a small child.
The guy’s eyes flicker and he comes to with an expression that would show horror over seeing us, but he can’t really muster it given that he’s injected goodness knows what crap inside of himself. He tries to tap the woman who is currently flat out on the mattress, hair splayed out everywhere, and with a pillow hiding her face. She doesn’t move an inch, even when the guy begins smacking her arm.
“Lisa! Lisa!” He shouts with as much energy as a newborn runt. Still, she doesn’t move. Charlie nudges me and points to the woman, silently telling me to go and assess the situation. I walk over without looking at the guy, reaching for Lisa’s outstretched wrist. The smell of her recent vomit isn’t a good sign but given the fact she doesn’t have a pulse and isn’t breathing, I’d say it’s the least of her worries. I look back at Charlie and shake my head. He rolls his eyes before pulling his trusty handgun out and pointing it toward the guy who can’t even look upset about his partner’s demise.
“You owe my boss money,” he says rather loudly, probably wondering if the guy can make proper use of his senses anymore.
“I know, I know,” he slurs, “and I can get it to him, but not until tomorrow, I swear--”
“You also used his name with another dealer,” Charlie says, waving his gun around in the air, “you know that shit won’t stand with Luis!”
“No, no, that wasn’t me!” he pleads but still can’t move from his slumped position on the bed. At least I won’t have to chase this one down because Lord knows the fat fuck next to me won’t be doing any running today, or any other day for that matter. “It was Lisa, she was desperate. I told her not to--”
“Hey, you believe this bastardo?!” Charlie says to me, pointing at the sickly-looking dude still half-stoned from his recent high. “This asshole is trying to pin his shit on his dead girl!” I clasp my hands together in front of me and shrug with an incredulous look on my face, all part of the act of intimidation. “Dirty motherfucker!”
“Please, tell Luis, I’ll get his money, I’ll do anything!”
“No, too late, ese!”
Charlie takes aim and fires, straight between his hollow eyes, causing his head to shoot blood, bone, and brain matter all over the wall behind him. No matter how many times I see it, I always have the same sensation of bile moving up my throat. Charlie goes to spit again but I nudge him this time with a look that tells him not to be so fucking stupid.
“DNA, fat boy,” I mutter. He rolls his eyes before swallowing back the ball of phlegm already in his mouth.
“Check the place, I’m gonna gather up the leftovers,” he says, meaning he’s going to claim back any unused product to give back to Luis.
I gotta say, I don’t check the house as thoroughly as I’d like because it’s that fucking disgusting. It’s a crying shame really, it’s a real nice building with a large backyard and flowing fields beyond the perimeter. The type of home a guy named Karl and his wife and their three kids would live, complete with a dog named ‘Spot’ because they lack the imagination to look beyond the animal’s fur coat. Instead, a couple of junkies have left it to decay underneath their shit, literally, and got themselves killed from a habit they just couldn’t quit.
Two bedrooms, a dining room, another vomit-inducing bathroom, and the kitchen later, and I’ve found nothing to warrant any concern or excitement. However, when I walk inside the last bedroom, I’m taken aback. It’s clean, ordered, and smells a whole heap better than the rest of the house. There are no clothes on the floor, the bed is made, and the curtains are pulled back to reveal a large window overlooking the messy front yard. I walk over to the desk where piles of high school books and classics by Charles Dickens are ordered by subject. Fragrant candles line the windowsill, and an air freshener is plugged into the wall. So, Mr and Mrs addict had a kid, a high school kid, who was obviously a lot more put together than their parents. Shit!
A loud, unintentional intake of breath comes from the direction of a door on my left, followed by a quiet scuffle. Reaching for my own gun from the waistband of my ripped jeans, currently sporting a few oil stains from my old bike, I point it out before me, then quickly close the gap between me and the door. I place my hand over the metal knob and pull at it. Inside, rows of clothes hang in neat, color-coordinated lines. But when I look down to the floor, I discover a small, quivering body huddled on the top of her shoes. Her face is streaming with tears, her eyes puffy, and her skin is bright red from the fierceness of her crying. At first, she can’t even look at me, just continues to tremble in front of the motherfucker who’s broken into her house and killed her parents, no doubt believing she’s next.
There’s a distinct smell of hot urine and when I look under her, sure enough, she has wet herself through sheer terror. Fuck! I hear Charlie’s heavy footsteps, straining under his massive weight, bringing him closer toward the front of the house.
“Dee, you done?!” he shouts. “It’s fucking rank in here and I wanna get back to scrub my ass clean.”
I stare at the girl, about sixteen or seventeen from the looks of her, and glances back at me with quiet resolution over the situation. She readies herself by closing her eyes and nodding at me, convinced of her fate and prepared to die with what is left of her pride.