Part 1:
http://www.writingforums.com/showthread.php?t=57807
Kristin was waiting for me on the front porch swing, pouting, with
her arms folded across her chest in that, "I know you were doing something
wrong," pose. I walked past her muttering, "I got held up at work," intent on getting into the shower before she smelled the barrista's perfume
on me. She followed me, but much to my surprise, she'd cooked lasagna and
set the table for our meal. Two glasses of red wine were waiting on the
bar.
"I thought you might like a bite after a hard day's work."
I was instantly suspicious. She hadn't cooked in years, insisting that
I get dinner on the way home. Actually, our marriage had become a matter
of convenience, neither of us wanting to go through the rigor of divorce
proceedings. "You cooked?"
"Yes."
"For me?"
"Yes."
Her smile was genuine. I almost felt guilty about my little trist with
the barrista. "Thanks, honey."
Bragg Street was like a war zone. Crackheads stumbled back and forth through litter-strewn government housing like zombies in a George Romero film. And they would eat your brain, too, just like the walking dead, for one hit of that mucous colored rock, boiled, sifted, and hardened to a gumdrop consistency.
I'd given up on helping people long ago. My former optimism had metamorphosed into a seething hatred of people in general. They are self-serving, greedy, and just waiting for an opportunity to stab their fellow man in the back.
I watched Dezora exit the QuickMart, her belly-shirt revealing folds of
gelatinous flab (from) six pregnancies, although I'd never personally seen
her caring for a child. She walked briskly to a white Lexus and conversed
with the driver, a thin black man wearing a street hat. As she spoke, he panned his head back and forth, surveying the parking lot. Something was about to happen.
The Lexus was the only car in the lot, and neither she or the thin man could see me watching from behind an abandoned building a block away. The thin man hopped out of the driver seat and entered the store, fumbling for something in his waistband. Several moments later he exploded from the building, sprinting for the white car. Dezora walked briskly away as the Lexus squalled tires and turned onto Garner Road.
Several minutes later I was chasing the Lexus down Dandridge Drive at an
unreasonable speed. The road ended in a new construction site. I knew this,
but obviously, the thin man didn't. He hit the dirt pathway at eighty miles
per hour, immediately slamming the brakes and sliding sideways. The car
struck a utility pole directly on the driver door, bending the machine into a
giant white boomerang before snapping the pole in two.
The thin man was dead on impact. As I approached, I considered calling an
ambulance, but I'd never called the pursuit on the radio. And there were no
witnesses at the site, so I decided against it. I opened the passenger door
and peered in. The man's lifeless body was twisted at an impossible angle, his
head halved like a grapefruit. Blood spurted from the stalk of his corpse as if
it were under pressure, pooling on his lap. My eyes were immediately drawn to the paper bag on the passenger seat. Inside, I found several rolls of twenty dollar bills, and a small caliber pistol. I took the money and left immediately. Eventually, someone would stumble onto the scene and clean up the mess. But I was merely thinking ahead to poker night. Three thousand dollars would buy a lot of chips, and I hoped to double that amount over the next couple of weeks.
I awoke that night and disentangled myself from Kristin's arms. My chest was on fire, the skin so heated I could barely touch it with my fingertips. Disrobed, studying my naked torso in the bathroom mirror, I was horrified. The cross was now attached to my skin. It was as if my flesh had somehow blended with the stone,the cross then sinking into my flesh until it's form was flush with the surface.And the skin surrounding the cross was now the same opaque color as the stone. I even had the charcoal spotting across my chest.
