David Jackson - Marked

Lorenze Wheaton ain’t afraid of no man. Not tonight. Not any night.

That’s what he tells himself. That’s what he believes. He doesn’t see what’s underneath. He’s blind to the young man in constant fear for his life. That version of Wheaton is a pussy. This here is the real Wheaton, walking tall and slow, not afraid of meeting the gaze of any motherfucker who might feel the need to stare him out.

His bravery is supported by the six-pack of beer he just shared at Tito’s place. The blunts they fired up there didn’t hurt neither. That was some seriously good shit Tito had there.

And then of course there’s the nine. The biggest confidence booster of them all.

He reaches behind, taps himself on the back, just over the right kidney. Feels through his jacket the reassuring hardness of the Beretta 92 tucked into his waistband.

Go ahead, Mojo, he thinks. Make your play. This nigger’s strapped, motherfucker, and don’t that change everything?

He’s strolling back from the projects on the other side of Avenue D, heading along East Seventh Street. It’s after midnight and it’s raining hard and the slick street is quiet. He doesn’t mind the rain. In fact he likes it. It calms him. He thinks he could just stop and stand here for hours, his face upturned to the sky, feeling the heavy raindrops beating softly on his face.

But he doesn’t stop walking. Something is dragging him home. Not fear. He ain’t afraid.

He knows Mojo wants to down him. Mojo has been putting the word out on this for weeks, and for no good reason. Not unless getting it on with Mojo’s huge-titted girlfriend counts as a reason.

Wheaton chuckles to himself. She was a fine piece of ass, all right. He’d loved to have seen Mojo’s face when he found out.

He hears the deep-throated roar of a car as it accelerates behind him. He turns, and is dazzled by the headlights. He halts and puts his hand behind him. The car goes straight past, the passenger, a blond white woman, giving him a cursory glance.

Wheaton blows air. Ain’t nothin’. Not Mojo’s boys and not Five-O. Besides, he can handle either one of them. If it’s Mojo’s crew, he pulls his nine and starts downing those bitches. If it’s the police, he books. He’s got it all figured out. Soon as a cop shows interest, he takes off like Road Runner, meep-meep . Maybe they catch him, maybe they don’t. What matters is that it gives him time to toss the strap. And if they find it, he can deny all knowledge. He always wears gloves when he takes the Beretta out with him. He’s not taking chances. If he’s caught carrying a concealed weapon it would mean serious jail time.

It’s but a short walk to his mom’s place. She won’t be there. She’s hardly ever there. She’ll be out with that new boyfriend of hers. She’ll turn up some time tomorrow. Lunchtime probably. Looking like shit. Then she’ll go straight to bed.

Wheaton doesn’t care. He likes having the crib to himself. When he gets in he’ll be able to play his music as loud as he wants while he has another beer and smokes some more weed.

Another car approaches. Wheaton tells himself to ignore it. He’s already at his apartment building. Seconds from safety. Not that he’s scared or nothing.

He doesn’t even bother to look as the car flashes past and he hears the spray of rainwater churned up from the wheels. No gunfire, no yelling at him to freeze. Nothing to get worked up about. He smiles as he permits himself a moment of feeling bulletproof before he abandons the street.

He looks up at his building. One light shines out from the top floor. The rest is in blackness. On the other side of the tall stoop he can make out bags of garbage stacked high on the trash cans. He kicks open the iron gate and starts down the steps to the basement apartment. The front door is set into the side of the stoop. He pats his pockets as he tries to get his fogged brain to remember where he put his damned keys. He hears a small metallic sound somewhere in his jacket. He reaches into one of his inside pockets, finds the key. He inserts it into the keyhole and turns. Pushes the door open.

The shape is on him in an instant.

It floats down from the street level. Barely seems to touch the steps. The slightest of sounds is all it makes. Wheaton has time to turn only a fraction before the dark shape is level with him. And although it seems to Wheaton that this must be some terrible ethereal demon to be able to travel so quickly and silently, when it strikes he discovers just how solid it actually is. Something — a fist, a weapon, he doesn’t know — connects with the side of his head with force enough to make everything go temporarily black, and when he next can see again, it’s the tiles of his floor he’s staring at.

He feels hands sliding over his back. At least he presumes they are hands. Right now he’s not even sure his attacker is human. What if these are some kind of feelers or claws running over him?

He hears a whimper, and realizes it’s himself.

He feels his jacket being yanked up and the Beretta snatched from under his belt. Now he’s utterly defenseless. Something grabs him at shoulder level. It lifts him from the ground slightly. Starts to drag him along the floor and into the interior of the apartment. There are no lights on in here. He cannot see anything. He feels like he’s being dragged into the lair of a giant insect of some kind, to be trussed up and eaten at its leisure.

Another whimper. Then he remembers he has a voice. ‘Hey! HEY! What is this? Who are-’

He gets hit again. Another blow to the right side of his head. He grunts, then starts to feel the burning pain in his ear.

His arms are grabbed and pulled behind his back. Something is tied tightly around his wrists, binding them together.

He raises his head from the floor. ‘Please, man. . Whoever you are. . Please. .’

He knows he’s making no sense, but he has no idea what is going on here. He doesn’t know what he should say, what he can do to stop this.

Something presses to his face. It forces his head back onto the cold floor. It’s a hand — a human hand. He’s sure of this now. ’Course it’s a human hand, Lorenze, you dumb fuck. What the fuck else would it be?

The hand is gloved. He can smell the leather as he struggles to draw air into his lungs.

And then his ear burns some more, but this time because hot breath is being blown onto it. Breath that carries three simple words that explain all this.

‘Mojo says hello.’

So this is it. The moment he has been preparing for but which, deep in his heart, he never really thought would come. He thought it was all bluster on Mojo’s part. Trying to sound big. Trying to maintain control through fear. All part of the game. The game that Wheaton has been playing too. Carrying that piece to show that he is also a warrior, ready to do battle at any time, even though he believed he would never have to pull the trigger.

And now that time has actually come, and he has already lost. He is about to die. Here in his mother’s place, where he ought to be safe. And tomorrow she will come home and find her only son with a bullet-hole in his skull, and his blood and brain matter spilled across her cold tiled floor.

‘I got money,’ he says. ‘I can get it for you. Just don’t-’

But his words are lost when the sack comes over his head and is fastened tight around his neck. He hears only his own breath now, coming fast and shallow, and his pulse, booming in his head. He closes his eyes. Even though he can see nothing anyway, he screws his eyes up tight and clenches his teeth and waits for the gunshot.

But it’s not going to be so quick and easy. His mental torture is not yet over.

‘Sing,’ the voice hisses against the cloth. At least that’s what it sounds like to Wheaton.