Crime Novela - 1st Chapter Rough-Draft (criticism welcome)
Somewhere in the distance a wolf howls at a mysterious planet, a sliver of luminescence amidst a great void, but a remnant of its former self. With this animal cry the creature worships the harbinger of darkness. Prey sleeps while the killer prepares to feast. Spiritually, I am allied with the carnivorous predator. Driven by powers beyond his control into a world where he is said not to belong, I imagine his teeth glistening beneath the pale light of his celestial goddess. With the knowledge that his exile is false — the vast expanse of lands his for the taking, his since the beginning of time — I imagine blood dripping from those same sharp teeth. Even more than physical starvation, it is mental starvation, a lack of peace of mind, that breeds his desperation. Wishing him luck in his hunt is not necessary, for within desperation lies a certain insanity, a craziness to die. Ten men or more are nothing against such a force. Gazing towards the heavens, I too pay my respects.
The lone sentinel sat at his post in a heroin induced trance, nodding in and out of consciousness. At one point, he dreamed that someone was coming for him. He did not know who or why, but he had some ideas. He did not attempt to strengthen his will in an effort to alter the content of his dream as he was not familiar with this concept. Thus, the darkness emerging from the depths of his soul continued to grow and his demise seemed eminent. Suddenly, his pursuer, the unidentifiable dream specter, had placed a gun to his temple.
He awoke . . . and it was so.
The name of this careless guard is not important. He was merely one of many similar men who were part of a loosely knit syndicate of ruthless drug dealers and vicious robbers. At the head of this organization sat none other than “Wide Awake” Willy, the man himself. But, we’ll get to him later.
The unfortunate man’s heavily tattooed face strained as his eyes attempted to identify his assailant peripherally, not daring to actually turn his bald head. He was in his early twenties and of Mexican descent, wearing a white wife-beater undershirt, long black basketball shorts, matching black house slippers, and heavily tinted Loc Sunglasses — the time was 4:00 AM. Head to toe Mara Salvatrucha-esque tattoos and a set of haggard gold teeth were the only authentic showcases of his physical thuggery, any other outward appearance was that of a junkie. His head was tiny with gaunt, sunken cheekbones along with a barely perceptible nose and mouth. The scrawniness of his face extended to the rest of his body, especially his arms, which were completely marred by the intravenous drug users’ trademark. The man’s most distinct characteristic was a set of ink devil horns that marked his narrow forehead, complimented by a tiny cross under each eye in place of the traditional teardrop. He was a killer no doubt, they were all killers, but his nature was impulsive and foolish rather than cold and calculating. Even he considered it a miracle that his life had lasted so long.
The 12’’ blue steel barrel of the pistol-grip Mossberg 500 Cruiser, a veritable sawed off shotgun with much greater accuracy, reflected in the window of the make-shift security hut. Its pressure against his head seemed to increase unceasingly. Time grinded to a halt and his only hope was that the trigger had not yet been pulled.
The all-too-real ghost from his unconscious spoke. “Show us the way.”
A wide smile spread across the captive’s face and his gold grill shimmered in the moonlight. His adrenaline level retreated back towards normal, replaced by his usually narcotic buzz. He may have been a killer, a veteran even, despite his young age, but before all else he was a rat. Nothing was more important to him than his own selfish interest and desires. He longed to live for a few more moments.
“Follow me,” he replied.
The man rose cautiously from the worn La-Z-Boy recliner that seemed ridiculously proportioned to the 5’ x 5’ free-standing structure which housed it. He walked out backwards, the pump-action shotgun now attached to the base of his skull, and began moving slowly towards the warehouse. The slight breeze of the humid night made him acutely aware of how much he had begun to sweat.
“A few more moments.”
He now realized that there were two entities following him not just one, but he was still unable to visualize or sense anything distinguishable about them. Their movements were impossibly silent and they seemed to blend perfectly into the darkness, one with the night.
“Demons,” he thought to himself, acceptingly, ”Come to pay me what I am owed.”
Outwardly, the warehouse looked no different than any of the other thousands of similar buildings that littered the Bay Area. Battered aluminum siding framed its two-story exterior and its business entrance was slightly less than a quarter mile from the roadside frontage of the industrial park, the security outpost lying roughly between both. It’s only peculiarities were the lack of signage, the excessive amount of security cameras, and the all-encompassing 20’ tall fence, the apex of which consisted of two sets of three lines of barbwire, each set at opposing 45 degree angles. In addition, a patrol of savage pit-bulls roamed the premises ready to attack the slightest nuance without mercy. Even the warehouse’s employees, of whom they were accustomed to, were not always safe from their ferocity. The fact that the dogs did not react in the slightest to these two apparitions only caused the man to more seriously contemplate the moral trepidation their presence inflicted upon him.
In his mind his fate had already been sealed — nevertheless, a few more moments.
Dominic, the shotgun wielding individual and his partner are the heroes of our story. You might call them villains. Motivated by revenge, their skills honed and resolve strong, they were unstoppable.
The trio quickly reached the small steel side-door of the warehouse. As the trembling hostage reached to press the intercom button in order to be granted entrance, Dominic crouched down low behind him. He already knew that no one seriously monitored the cameras, but he was not here to take any chances. His partner, carrying a silenced 9 mm handgun, had dropped back a short distance, providing him with cover that would not alert their ultimate target.
“Yo, let me in, mane.”
“Yuh.”
It was that easy. Almost too easy.
The dimly lit, dust-smelling warehouse was empty except for a large room that had been partitioned in the far left corner and a metal staircase against the right wall leading to a single small apartment on the second floor, their destination.
“The loot is up there,” the man confessed without provocation.
“Yes,” Dominic answered. He nudged him forcefully with the gun. “Keep moving.”
They walked casually along the wall of the building, right and then left at the corner. The hard part was over. The real fun was about to begin. Just as they began to ascend the stairs, Dominic’s eyes, which had not stopped scanning the surroundings, caught site of a situation that he had not foreseen. The roof of the single-story, partitioned room was made of glass and its contents were brightly illuminated. Inside he counted 10 young Latina women, completely naked other than the white painters masks over their mouths. They worked methodically breaking down, cutting, and then bagging what looked like hundreds of kilos of heroin, an assembly line of sorts. Their required nudity was an effort to keep them from attempting to steal even the tiniest amount of the drug that was worth far more than its weight in gold. Obviously, the warehouse had just received a huge shipment of their most coveted product. The revelation did not cause him to miss a step.
“Open the door,” Dominic instructed the man as they reached the top of the stairs.
“One more moment,” the man convinced himself. And, he was right.
Their entrance was spectacular. The traitor’s job complete, he flew into the room propelled by a grandiose blast to the spine. Just as Dominic had suspected, only one man sat unexpectedly on a couch spanning the far wall of the room. He wasn’t quite terrified yet, but he was certainly startled. He did not even notice his welcome gift in the form of a 9 mm bullet to the stomach that accompanied his two guests. They were seated next to him before he could reach for his own gun. The dead man joined them as well.
The man on the couch, his eyes gradually starting to pop out of his skull, could have been the sentry’s brother. He carried more weight and less tattoos, wearing khaki pants with a slightly lower forehead, but it is relatively safe to say that they were the same person.
“Where is your boss?” Dominic asked calmly. The menace in his placid demeanor was clear, reflected even more so in the way he held the lifeless body of the man’s associate in his arms. It wasn’t the profusely bleeding and bullet-riddled corpse that affected the man, as he had witnessed many of those in his day, but rather, the manner in which this ski-masked assassin dressed in all black, eyes full of rage his only visible feature, manipulated the face of the fallen like some kind of fiendish ventriloquist.
Dominic lounged leisurely on the couch, his right arm draped around the neck of his recently deceased victim who was comfortably squeezed between himself and the wounded interrogatee. Farthest from Dominic and to the immediate right of the trembling man sat his faithful partner, equally outfitted and relaxed. With the television in front of them playing a game-show, they were almost the quintessential image of familial bliss, almost — that is because the 60” flat-screen TV with piano-black finish and the ridiculously expensive black leather couch, both fine examples of modern design, did not belong in any normal home, nor did the dirty needles and random drug paraphernalia that adorned the glass coffee table at their feet — that and, of course, the stark brutality of the scene. The TV show’s theme song provided a laughingly ironic ambience. “This is Jeopardy!”
With his left hand, Dominic used two fingers held up like a peace sign to maneuver the dead man’s expression in response to the question he continued to ask. The expansive array of tattoos on the puppet’s face, especially the set of horns on his forehead, made the act all that more ominous.
“Where is your boss?”
“No comprendé,” the man pleaded, pretending that he did not understand English.
The corpse of his associate frowned in accordance.
“¿Dónde está tu pardron?”
“No se,” the man lied, the urine stain growing on his pant-leg.
Dominic nodded to his partner who reacted by shoving and then withdrawing two gloved fingers into the uncooperative man’s fresh abdominal bullet-wound, the silenced Glock Compact still expertly trained to the man’s head. The dead man’s neutrality changed to sadness once again.
¿Dónde está tu padron?” Dominic replied with no change in the tone of his voice.
Apparently, his unyielding tranquility did not manifest in the countenance of his new friend. “¡No sé! ¡No sé!”
The warm, wet orifice was penetrated much deeper and rougher this time, the grizzly fingering causing the man to shriek hysterically. In achieving this desired response, the torturer’s gratification mirrored the symbolic eroticism of the act. The man began to pray into the still unhappy face of his dead friend. The religious significance of Satan’s horns and God’s crucifixes further dramatized the precariousness of his fatal situation.
“Por favor, madre de la muerte . . ."
“Nosotros estamos tu madre de la muerte ahora,” Dominic interrupted softly, a softness in direct contrast to the indescribable anger in his eyes and therefore that much more unnerving to the man they rested upon.
With the finality of the question somehow perceptible, perhaps to a kind of instinctual sense of self-preservation, coupled with the two fingers stroking the g-spot of his wound in a come-hither motion, the man erupted with an orgasm of compliance.
“The Plaza Hotel!” Todos los noches. ¡Por favor!”
Dominic’s suspicions confirmed, the execution was instant and without ceremony. The man’s parting vision was a ghastly and devilish grin.
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Originally Posted by JH408
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