K'wan - Gutter

“Die muthafuckas!” Ruby roared, firing her cannon. The Eagle sent shock waves up her arm every time it bucked, but she held it in a death grip. She didn’t even bother to take cover as Rob and High Side exchanged fire with her crew. Her own safety was no longer an issue. All that mattered to her was revenge.

Rob tried to get out of the line of fire, but was too slow. Ruby hit him once in the leg and twice in the back. Rob tried to keep his feet, but vertigo overcame him and he hit the ground. Rob was leaking all over the place, but he still tried to crawl to the hysterical C-style.

The remaining shooter had managed to back High Side into the doorway of the bodega. The small man who worked the register quickly slammed the small wooden door, separating himself from the skirmish and grabbed his phone to call the police. The shooter was trying to bring his firing arm around, but High Side held onto his wrist for dear life, while hitting him with a series of left hooks to the skull.

Over the shooter’s shoulder he saw his little man, Young Rob, slam face first into the ground. Ruby was easing up on the boy’s prone body to finish him off, but High Side was too busy fighting for his own life to do anything about it. He watched in horror as she knelt beside Rob and blew the back of his head off with the Eagle.

High Side’s grief lasted for about five seconds before it was replaced with blinding rage. He grabbed the shooter by his arm and slammed his knee into it, at the elbow. The shooter howled in pain as the gun went flying from his hand. High Side cracked him with a savage right to the jaw, sending him spilling out onto the street. High Side went to pen him, but froze when he heard a round being chambered to his right.

Ruby drew a bead on High Side, who was frozen like a deer in headlights, and prepared to finish him off. Though she knew the young man wasn’t Gutter, he’d been identified as a shooter for Harlem Crip. High Side had murdered quite a few of her folk, so he definitely had to go. No sooner than Ruby’s finger brushed the trigger, pain exploded in her chest. She looked down at her blouse, which now had a red stain in the middle. On shaky legs, Ruby turned to see C-style holding Rob’s smoking gun.

“Bitch,” Ruby gasped. “You shot me.” She was dead before she hit the ground.

With the immediate threat being taken care of, High Side refocused his attention on his attempted murderer. The shooter’s arm hung limp at his side as he tried to get up using one arm. High Side drew his pocketknife and grabbed the shooter by the back of his shirt.

“Fuck you think you going?” He yanked the shooter to his feet. “You was gonna kill me huh, muthafucka?” High Side cut his face with the blade. “Yeah, I told you niggaz about fucking around in Harlem.” He plunged the knife into the shooter’s gut. High Side stabbed him over and over again. Even when the shooter went down, High Side continued to plunge the knife into his chest, arms, legs, or whatever else was exposed. Only when he heard the familiar police sirens in the distance did he stop stabbing the man.

Wiggling the blade deeper into the wound, High Side broke it off in the man’s chest then addressed C-style. “Baby girl, we gotta roll!” High Side called, while wiping his bloody hands on the dead shooter’s pants.

“Oh, Rob,” she sighed over his ruined body.

“C, we gotta go, now!” High Side said more forcefully. When C-style didn’t respond, he grabbed her by the arms and yanked her to her feet. “C”-he turned her to face him-“Cory, that nigga gone and you can’t honor his memory behind no damn bars. Now bring yo ass on, girl!”

C-style said her final goodbyes to Rob and allowed High Side to lead her away at a jog. In the course of a few seconds her life had been irreversibly changed. Rob was dead and she had officially caught her first body. Until then she had been little more than a supporter, but now found herself in it up to her ass.

SHARELL HADnever been happier to see her little Brooklyn block. What started out as a quick outing ended up with her shopping on 125th for her and Satin, and hitting the bootlegger for some movies. She knew that the girl was going through a lot and she wanted to plan a girls’ night out to help her on the road to recovery. After being near catatonic for so long she needed to refamiliarize herself with the world.

She locked her door and pulled her jacket closed to protect her from the whipping winds. It seemed like out of nowhere the weather had dropped since earlier. Just as she reached the front of the building a fashion magazine that she’d been holding blew away. She thought about chasing it, but it was chilly and she wanted to get inside with the bags.

Outside her apartment door she could hear the sounds of rap videos coming from the television. Good, Satin was still awake so she could see her new outfits. The moment Sharell turned the key in the lock she heard a door behind her swing open. When she turned around she found herself nose to barrel with a wild-eyed man holding a gun.

“Bitch, if you even think about screaming I’m gonna peel yo shit,” B-High warned. The coke had him charged so his hand trembled a bit.

“Please, just take it. Don’t hurt me!” Sharell pleaded, trying to hand him her shopping bags and purse.

“I don’t want ya fucking goodie bag.” He slapped the bags away viciously. “Back into the crib, bitch, now!” he ordered.

“Sharell, is that you?” Satin called from the couch, where she had been perched most of the day. She knew she heard Sharell unlock the door, but wondered who she could be talking to? When she got off the couch to investigate, Sharell spilled into the living room, almost knocking her over. Hot on her heels was a man with a gun. Satin thought about going to the kitchen for a knife, but the man must’ve been reading her mind because he took the gun off Sharell and trained it on Satin.

“Don’t get cute, bitch,” he warned. “Both of y’all get on the couch.” He waved the pistol. Sharell complied, but Satin stood where she was. It wasn’t that she was trying to be defiant, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate with her.

“You hear me talking to you.” B-High stepped forward and placed the gun against Satin’s forehead. Tears ran freely from the girl’s terror-filled eyes, thinking that she was going to die that night and her escape from the institution would’ve been in vain.

“Don’t! She’s fresh out of a mental hospital and probably isn’t processing what you’re telling her!” Sharell screamed. She was trying to buy them some time so she could figure a way out of the mess. Her gun was inside her purse, lying on the hallway floor outside the apartment. She also had a pager that would alert Mohammad to trouble, but it was useless, hanging from her keychain, which was still dangling from the lock in the front door. Unless she figured something out they’d both be dead.

“Let’s see if she processes this.” B-High slapped Satin viciously in the face.

She spun and had it not been for the couch she’d have hit the floor. Satin touched her hand to her lip and it came away bloody. Satin had fought her brothers all throughout her childhood for trying to put their hands on her, but a stranger doing it was even more of an insult. Though she knew she was holding the short end of the stick, she couldn’t help but wish that she’d still had the gun she’d used to murder her brother.

“That’s better.” B-High smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Here you go.” He tossed the roll next to Satin. “Tape your friend up, and make sure you do it good, because if she causes any shit before I’m done I’m gonna have to shoot her sooner than I intended.”