Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

“Snap!!!”

I took the stairs two at a time as I ran holding the tiny infant tight against me. Scratch’s voice boomed in the darkness below.

“You’re dead, motherfucker! You hear me, fool? I’m going to kill you and everyone you ever knew!”

I flew from the house, down the front steps, and flung open the door to my Impala with my heart beating against my chest as if it was trying to break free and run. I was hyperventilating, trying to suck oxygen into my cramped lungs as panic and shock crushed down on me threatening to stop my heart in my chest.

“What the hell did I just see down there? What tha fuck was that?”

The child was still silent as I buckled him up as best I could and struggled to fit the keys into the ignition with a hand shaking violently with an overdose of adrenalin and a blood pressure that must have been in the one eighties. A bullet smashed through the driver’s side window and whistled past my nose. Scratch stood in the doorway aiming that big shiny .45 at my head. He looked normal again and he looked pissed. I ducked down and finally managed to fit the key into the ignition. More bullets whistled by over head as I started the engine and raced away from the withered crack-house with the raging white demon slumped in the doorway, his chest stained crimson, firing carelessly into the night.

««—»»

A deluge of gunfire thundered down upon the tank-like ’72 Impala as it rocked and swerved up G-town Avenue at heart-stopping speeds. It kicked up trash and garbage as it barreled through the somber deserted streets pursued by the gold-encrusted red Beemer. The entire time I couldn’t help but to doubt my sanity.

Why on earth was I trying to save this child? Why hadn’t I just blown him away along with his crackhead mother? It wouldn’t have been the first kid I’d killed. Why was I risking my life for this little crackbaby? Had all that talk from Mom and Yolanda started to get me? Was I developing a conscience? Was I getting soft? Was I looking for forgiveness? Redemption? If so it was too little too late. I had too much blood on my hands to ever be forgiven. Not by myself and not by God.

But then darker questions, more terrifying questions invaded my head making me want to cry out in terror.

Did I really just see Scratch turn into a monster down there? Is this mutherfucker really goddamned Satan? What the hell have I gotten myself into?

I tried to shut those thoughts out. What I thought I saw couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have.

A cascade of glass rained down upon my head as bullets ripped through the Impala like a stinging swarm of angry bees. I ducked, closed my eyes, and moaned like a bitch. I was scared to death, confused, and lost without that cocky, ignorant, madness that usually protected me from fear and doubt. It had been a long time since I had run from anything outside myself and I didn’t like it. It was funny, just hours ago I would have never doubted that I could take Scratch out with ease, yet here I was fleeing for my life as he chased my black ass all over creation. Under normal circumstances I would have just turned and capped this punk. But these were not normal circumstances. There was no way I could have missed Scratch at that range, even in the dark, yet there he was ten seconds off my ass. And then there was that bizarre transformation. It might have just been the shadows. It was pretty dark down there.

But what if it wasn’t? What if Scratch really is some kind of fucking monster?

Still, running from a battle just wasn’t my thing. I hated the idea of catching a bullet in my back when there was at least the opportunity to die like a man and maybe take him out with me, but I couldn’t risk getting the child killed too.

The tired, old car gasped and wheezed and seemed to cry out in pain—leaking fluids and spraying steam and noxious blue smoke from burning oil. The tires screeched in protest as I forced it into turns that would have taxed vehicles half its years. I was a terrible driver and for the umpteenth time it occurred to me how senseless it would be to avoid Scratch only to kill us both by crashing into a pole.

Burning rubber mixed with the smell of sulfur and oil, the sound of shattering glass, the whine of bullets, and the screams of tortured metal. Yet, the baby lay passively in the passenger seat as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was staring at me soothingly. A loving, trusting smile played across his face. Even amid the roaring chaos my heart began to lighten. If he lived he’d make one hell of a pimp or a con-man someday. He was playing me like Nintendo. His soft vulnerable-looking, brown skin and carelessly nappy hair alone made me want to protect him or die trying. Looking at him gave me the courage to keep my mind from shutting down and giving in to the desire to curl up on the front seat and just wait for the fatal bullet that would void my brain from my skull onto the dashboard. If any nigga on earth deserved such a fate it was damn sure me. I wondered if this little baby would forgive sins as profound as mine? If he truly knew what I was— a killer without a conscience being pursued to the death by another.

I decided to try to buy us some time by emptying a few rounds into Scratch’s BMW to see if I could slow his ass down. My blood was jackhammering through my veins so hard and fast I could feel it pounding in my ears. My mind felt like it was wading through thick mud and fog. Everything I did seemed a few seconds off. Aiming was a joke. I would’ve been lucky to hit the car at all let alone to hit Scratch.

I held the nine-millimeter Beretta in my lap trying to cock it with my right hand while steering with my left as the accelerator slowly crept toward ninety and traffic grew denser.

Come on, Brother. Get your shit together! I screamed to myself, still trying to fight off panic, emotional exhaustion, and eventual collapse.

This white mutherfucker can’t win! You can’t let that devil win. That bitch-ass peckerwood wouldn’t be shit without you—

That thought chilled me to the bone. Certainly Scratch didn’t owe his entire success to me. He was well on his way to becoming a serious ghetto star before I even met him. But I had helped. I had helped a lot.

Maybe I was supposed to pay for my sins by getting my cap peeled in a moving car and dying with the Baby Christ in my arms ?

The Baby Christ? What tha fuck am I talkin’ about? Do I really believe that this little crack baby is Jesus? His pipe-smokin’ mother certainly wasn’t the Virgin Mary. What a fucked up twist of fate that would be for Christ to be reborn as some helpless little crack baby in the middle of a war zone with no one to protect him, but a crazy murder-for-hire nigga like me. Didn’t the church have secret orders dedicated to this sort of thing? Trained Vatican bodyguards or something? Maybe I should get him to a church and let them handle it? I thought as I fought to keep the Impala on the road whipping it around tight corners at over 80 miles per hour.

“Oww! Shit!”

A bullet ripped through my ear and seared a small furrow alognisde my head, inches from my temple. That familiar berserker rage, which had served me in so many street fights, descended on me like a black cloud blotting out fear and reason.

“Oh, you have got ta die now. I don’t give a fuck what you are. You’ve got to die.”

I switched the gun to my left hand and swung it over my right shoulder, aiming with help from my rearview mirror. I could see Scratch’s face through my shattered rear windshield. I slowed down to let the BMW get closer as I pointed my gun right into the face of the devil. White flame leapt into his eyes and his pasty face split wide with a gold-toothed grin. Calmly he raised the big shiny Colt .45 and pointed it at me. At this range he couldn’t miss and he was aiming much better than I was. The back of my head and center of my forehead started to itch and I knew that the bullet would enter and exit there if I allowed him to pull that trigger. I squeezed the trigger frantically and the obnoxious red Beemer swerved into a parked car, going up on two wheels and nearly flipping end over end. When it came to rest I could have sworn I saw something scamper out of the car on four long gnarled legs…something with wings and claws and eyes that burned like stars. It staggered and collapsed in the street and I turned my attention back to the road just as I ran a red light and barreled through the intersection of Germantown and Chelten Avenues.