Chapter 13
It is a Thursday morning and I have skipped school.
When I arrive to the street as instructed yesterday through the phone, I meet up with a big old man with a potbelly. Behind him are the two men with tattoos on their neck, who paid a visit to Sybilla and Saida the day before.
It’s warm and clear today, but by the looks of it, I will be threading into the dark shimmers of decomposition underground and most probably illegal business, which leads me to suggest death is nigh.
I stand face to face with the old man, wearing my boots and black clothing, he laughs in disbelief. He says to me, “You’re the guy on the phone? You’re Kid? You’re just a kid.” The two men behind him made an obligatory laugh as their employer is just bursting with it.
I nod unsmiling and straight edge as I am; I ask him, “What’s the job?” I just want to get this over with, as fast as I can. And as with the rhythm of a cheesy tune, he stops laughing, and tilts his head to examine me. He asks me why I killed Katak, and I see no reason to lie, so I say he was a savage. He chuckles and says that Katak deserves it then, and then went on lecturing me about the inner workings of debt payment. I nod, he proceeds with asking me where I live, I have doubts, but he will find out eventually, so I say right across where Katak and where his girls live. He smiles at that bit as if his real plan is perfected.
He pulls out a gun shrewdly from his pockets and then hands them to me; I didn’t ask him what is the arsenal for, because I know what it is for, protection. Instead I ask him, what we have to do.
I take the gun, and put it behind my pants. I never used a gun before, and when he ask if I did, I lied and said I am in the in the Police Squad in school and that I have training in weapon arms to give him the assurance that I can do the job.
“Right,” he says, not giving a damn bird poop about my high school life. “Here is the deal, you won’t get any cut from this job, but instead the girls won’t have to pay the debt anymore. Do you understand?”
I give him a nod. Not much of a talker myself.
All of us, four men stand in silence for a bit, staring at one another before the job goes down, armed and ready. We are the silken Baptist of unforgiving souls that wish to prolong the Day of Judgment.
“Kid, you’re going to that store with my boys here,” the big man points behind to a small cd store, not far from where we are standing. “And you’re going to help them. All you have to do is point this gun at anybody who is there to make sure they don’t make a move, while one my boys do the real work. Simple, right? All you have to do is just make sure my boys here are safe with the package.”
So basically what this job is a burglary job. Rob a store, and that’s it. Nothing complicated. I give him a nod that I understand what is about to go down, he smiles.
“Alright then, get on going,” the big man says as he enters his car, and drives off, leaving me with the two tattooed men.
“Kid, that’s you, right?” one of the tattooed men asks me with a sharp voice. He points at a black car that looks as if was stolen and says, “That’s our getaway, Liew here is going to wait in the car, you and I are going in. I will take the package and you’re going to make sure nobody gets in or out from the store but us, got it?”
I observe Liew getting ready in his position, going in the car and starting it up, adjacent to the store.
I say, “I’m ready, let’s do this.”
Both of us enter the store calmly, and as I close the door behind me I think of Bruce Lee and jiujutsu. Have I ever been to kindergarten? I think, no. But then, how come I have memories of it. The first time I went to kindergarten, I know I cried when my mother dropped me off, I thought she was leaving me or something. Back then, she had a boyfriend, and back then I thought that boyfriend of hers was my father. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I cried for about an hour and then I made some friends, and that’s when I shut my mouth. Can’t believe it was easy making friends back then, now it’s impossible.
When I was in the third grade, my mother dropped me off from school, and I couldn’t forget about that day. She was hung-over as hell, couldn’t believe she made the drive, I was half expecting we, as a family would visit God and frolic by the garden of Heaven. She was half naked, only wearing her good pants, hiding in the car as I left, but people noticed. Other parents and teachers looked at my mother like she the worst parent in the world, for a second I hated my mother for embarrassing me, but then the second passed and I turn to see the people judging her. They were uncomfortable, I don’t know why. Like Salvatore Dali took a deuce on their faces. And that’s when I stop hating on my mother and start hating people who judge her. She’s a hare, and she’s doing her best to get by.
I think of the reasons why women can’t run around with their titties out, while men can do it without being scorned. It’s all just skin and fat. I don’t get why people get uncomfortable by it, personally I would be uncomfortable if a woman is running around topless with her tits out in front of me. And I know why, because the female body is like an obscure art. Art is supposed to make you uncomfortable.
And here is the funny part, why would I get uncomfortable if a lady is topless showing her nipples? A woman’s body is never her own, is it? She should be the one uncomfortable that people are staring.
My co-worker, upon hearing the door close shut tight by me, pulls out his gun and points it at the man by the counter. “Don’t move, nobody needs to die, now where is the package?” he says and I pull out my gun and point at the man too. The man by the counter is young, couldn’t be older than twenty five, has a boy-stache . Something tells me we won’t be alive from this whole ordeal. He is panicking, shivering as he is, my co-workers approach him and yells, “Where is the package!” with the gun pressing the man’s head, while I stand by the door, making sure nobody goes in.
“At the back,” the man says, and with that my co-worker is whipped into action, opens the door behind the man and enters, not before turning to me and say, “Watch him kid, make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
I should be in school right now, getting proper education, but here I am pointing a gun at a man.
He twitches, moving his hands, and I instruct him, “Don’t make a move man. Stay where you are.”
“You’re going to get it,” he tries to frighten me. “Who don’t know who you stealing from man, they are going to find and they are going to kill you.”
“Shut up. Shut up!” I’m sweating already.
Approximately two minutes and fourteen seconds pass.
My co-worker as he makes his way out from the back carrying a big black bag, the man I’m pointing this gun at, quickly pulls out a big shotgun from under the counter and shoots my dear co-worker. Blam! A shotgun shot from the back killed him instantly. A big round hole mortared itself on his body, a large chunk of his flesh splash all over the store.
I quickly respond, afraid of my life, I pull the trigger three times before the man could put a crater in me with his big shotgun. Three times, and all three shots hit the man. One got through his chest, one got between his eyes, and the other got through his right eye. It’s romantic in a way, the bullets were like roses, my finger on the trigger was like me holding his hands on a date, and the way the bullets penetrate his skin and injured his vital organs was me engaging intercourse with him during a Sunday mass inside a church filled with Catholics, all in a while a lightning storm with the anger and collapsing capability of an atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima spire right outside.
I killed the man, and as his soul leaves his body, I think that Time and Death are two best friends.
Time consents all living things to be raised, so that Death can on day kill them.
A kill is never easy; whoever says otherwise is either God himself or never killed a man before.
As humans with our self-conscious mind and whatnot, we have trouble coping with life because we think too much.
Liew who is in the car honks as loud as he can once he heard the gunshots firing.
You see the thing with this whole thing is that it is entirely ignoratio elenchi, probably because I am trying my best to fill in something in which I do not have the skills to fill it in.
Everything that exists now should go on existing.
I turn to see I’m the only survivor, bent on finishing this job, only thinking of Sybilla, I grab the big black bag my co-worker was carrying, and immediately I run out from the store with the screams of women and kids, and yells from men. I hop in to the dark car with the bag, I sit behind the backseat.
Liew panicking turns to me, “Where is Yap?! Where is he?”
“Dead. He is dead. Drive! Drive!” I yell.
He presses the gas as hard as he can, and without any difficult we got to the main road, Liew asks me, “You got the package?”
I show him the bag and say, “Yeah, yeah,” not knowing what truly is inside the bag, and what is the content of this package they are all talking about.
Liew curses as he drive us off, this isn’t like a video game or the movies, the cops didn’t come barging in instantly and tried to stop us. So there was no difficulty in driving away from the scene, as chaotic as it went down.
By the fifth minute I am in the car with this man, I notice it is a dragon tattoo on his neck, I couldn’t see it properly before, but now I can. A spiraling dragon, and I recall the other one, the one named Yap who died in the store, he has the same tattoo. Same design, same spiraling dragon. I’m still sweating hard; I slide to the left side to see Liew holding his tears.
He is mumbling curse words, “Mother-,”
I think Liew and Yap here are good friends, or maybe something close, family perhaps, he doesn’t take the news of Yap’s death very well. We stop a red light, his hands shaking, lights a cigarette and continues swearing in frustration, hitting the steering wheel. “Can I have a smoke?” I don’t know why, but I ask him.
I don’t think I understand. I think it’s because I was disillusion, I thought of these tattooed men were bad guys, but as I sit behind her, watching Liew surging his emotions and cussing the wind, I think of him as a human. No longer a savage.
What made me think humans are savages?
He throws me the whole pack and a lighter, and as the red light turns green, he hit the gas driving.
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