Post by Outcast on Jul 7, 2021 15:40:52 GMT -5
I slowly turn the cylinder of the .38 examining the shells in it. I ask myself, “am I ready for this, am I willing to pull this trigger?”. In my younger, drug-fueled days I wouldn’t have even hesitated to ask myself this question.
Am I getting softer in my old age?
F**k no. What do I have to live for? Not much.
But.
I got a lot worth dying for.
I flip the cylinder closed and return my gaze to the Rancher-style home I have been parked in front of for hours. I will stay here as long as I have to to find this Peter motherf**ker.
Peter isn’t the only motherf**ker on my mind though, there is also Dylan Thomas. I try to calm myself with a Newport, and as I grab to pack from the seat beside me I am met with disappointment. The pack is empty.
F**K!
I smack the steering wheel, grit my teeth, and shake my head, all in the name of anger.
The things we do in anger.
Lately, I've been afraid of myself
The closer that I get to rain
The more I feel at home, the further I'm away
And all that I feel is pain
The closer that I get to rain
The more I feel at home, the further I'm away
And all that I feel is pain
The quiet time, being stuck alone with my thought and my anger bled into my subconscious. Coupled with my exhausted state I have to focus, but I’m not only thinking about Peter, but I’m also thinking about Dylan Thomas.
Dylan, I’m angry with you. Not angry with you because you are a cocky piece of sh*t, or a, um, how do I put this plainly… an uh, f**king idiot. It’s not even that you think you can not only beat me but retire me. Na, neither of those are happening. One, you simply aren’t good enough to beat me, we’re not even in the same f**king league. Two, I’m not a cockroach, there could be a nuclear fallout and I’d survive. No Dylan, what really pisses me off about you is that you think I’m afraid of you.
Quite frankly, I have nothing left to fear in this life. I’ve suffered pain, agony, loss, been financially destitute, suffered public humiliation, and I’ve buried everyone I’ve ever loved. Do you think I fear losing to someone like you? Dylan, you are trying to play checkers when the game is chess.
You’re only thinking one move at a time, but people at my level are thinking three or four moves ahead. It’s what separates us, Dylan, well, that and the fact that I’m a grizzled old bastard and you’re just some millennial pussy.
It’s not that I couldn’t have Lissandra, I could have her or any other plastic, surgically built bimbo just like her. She’s about the money and the fame, so many women just like her are. The companionship, the bond of having one another, that is what I am envious of. Not who you have it with. However, there is something I have that you covet so greatly, and no, it’s not the Paradigm championship.
What I have that Dylan longs for so badly, is respect. Respect from the fans, and respect from the other wrestlers. When someone sees their name across from mine on a card, the hair stands up on the back of their necks. When someone sees their name across from Dylan Thomas, that chuckle and consider it a night off. You think that winning the Paradigm championship is going to earn you some respect, but it won’t. If you want respect Dylan, you need to take it, and if you could stop being such a whiny little b*tch, that’d probably help too.
People see how you follow Lissandra around like a little puppy, and how you surround yourself with useless goons, and they know you have no balls. You’re like a neutered little Chihuahua, you keep plugging away, but results in absolutely nothing. To spite all of your efforts, you have nothing to show for it, no gold, and no respect. Despite it all, you are nothing more than sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. In other words, to break it down for the checkers player, you are nothing, and you will remain nothing.
As I stop talking and the thoughts of Dylan Thomas rush from my head as I see him, it’s Pete. Pete jogs to the silver Impala that sits in the driveway and quickly hops it. He pulls out of the driveway and down the road, and I follow after.
Pete doesn’t drive like someone who is trying to avoid being watched, he drives like he’s on a Sunday afternoon cruise. I follow him as he stops at the pharmacy, grocery, and then the gas station. My beloved ex and his former partner are rotting in the ground, and he’s running f**king errands.
I hate you, Pete.
I park down the block and hop out, shoving the .38 into my waistband and my hands into my pockets. I walked right up on him, with no situational awareness at all. Pete is fumbling with the keys when he feels the snub nose press into his back and feels my voice tickle his ear.
“Where’s granny and the girl?”, I ask calmly but affirmatively. I feel Pete’s body begin to shake, and his voice cracks as he says, “Anna took her grandma to visit her sister in Biloxi”. I feel a smile creep across my ugly mug, “good, we’ll have the house to ourselves” I say as I follow Pete into the house.
Only about an hour has passed since I laid hands on Pete, and it hadn’t taken much for Pete to start talking. I sat him down on the couch and sat across from him in a wooden chair I had dragged in from the dining room. Just having the barrel of a .38 point at him and Pete’s mouth opened faster than Lissandra’s legs when she is trying to get Dylan a title shot. He told me everything about Nelson, their business, their deal with the Dixie Mafia to transport drugs throughout the Southeast for them, and ultimately his and Nelson’s plan to skim a little more off the top.
It was Nelson’s idea, but he got it from me. One day after a meeting where Anderson, our contact from the DM was bitching at us about not moving enough fast enough. After he had left, I told Nelson, those rednecks were too damn stupid to realize the risks of moving that much product that fast. I went on a rant for a while talking about how dumb they were, and then Nelson asked me if I thought they were smart enough to realize that their loads were a little light.
Honestly, I didn’t think they would be. It started small, about a quarter pound a load, but the more they didn’t notice, the more we skimmed. We got up to taking around five pounds out of every one hundred. Then those dumb rednecks did an audit of their inventory and noticed that over the years they had come up a few hundred pounds light.
A few hundred pounds?
Pete’s head dropped and he started sobbing.
Yeah, it had been a couple of years and then one day they just burst into the office and demanded we reimburse them the cost of five hundred pounds of meth.
Why didn’t you guys just pay them?
Because that is eight million f**king dollars, we didn’t have that much money laying around. We told them we couldn’t pay them and asked for some time, so they agreed but then shot our f**king foreman right in front of us and told us we had a week.
Ah, f**k me. I told Nelson we needed to run, but he said we’d figure it out. The day before the week was up I was about to pull in the driveway and saw some weird f**ken guys in my driveway, and I just kept driving. I got Anna and got out of town. The next day… the…
I saw what happened to Nelson and his family on the news. Oh God, what the f**k am I going to do?
Pete continued to spill his guts, I don’t know if it was because he wanted to get it all off his chest, or because he was just thankful, I wasn’t a mechanic sent by the DM. Either way, he told me all I wanted to know and more, but most importantly he told me who would have ordered the hit and who carried it out.
It had to be Anderson. Anderson Blake. He was the man that came and saw us all the time, and he was f**king crazy. He was the one who shot the foreman, he was one of the guys I saw outside of my house.
Who was the other?
I don’t know. I’d never seen him before, some big, bald, Aryan-looking dude.
I stick a Newport into my mouth and lite it.
Um, Anna’s grandmother doesn’t let people smoke in the house.
I could give a f**k less about granny and what she allows in her house. I don’t say anything to Nelson, but just slowly stand and take a long drag.
Where can I find this Anderson Blake?
He uh, he has a house in Atlanta that Nelson and I went to a couple of times.
Do you know the address?
Uh, yeah.
Pete pulls his phone out and soon as an address for me that was buried in his GPS history. Of course, a logistics expert would keep an address saved. After I take the address from Pete, I have no need for him anymore. I can tell Pete is nervous, and he should be.
I’m just so glad you were someone looking for Nelson and not someone from the DM.
I take a last drag from the Newport and as I exhale say, “I could give a sh*t less about Nelson. Nicole, and the girls though... they were innocent".
Pete’s head drops and he looks at the floor as he pathetically states, “Yeah, they were. In the wrong place, at the wrong time I suppose. I wish Nelson had run when I told him too.”.
Good without evil is like light without the darkness which in turn is like righteousness without hope.
What? What does that mean?
It means I will be righteous when I kill Anderson.
“Oh, sh*t. I thought you were going to kill me.” Pete says with a tone of relief.
I smirk at Pete and break the bad news to him, “oh no Pete, you are going to kill yourself”.
As I headed out the door, I was a bit in shock. I couldn’t believe that Pete had hung himself from the rafters in the garage using an extension cord. I supposed he was overcome with the grief of losing his partner, the shame of cheating on his wife with a girl young enough to be his daughter, and the fear of looking over his shoulder the rest of his life.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it though, I had to get to Atlanta.
Crimson tears falling and my shirt is blood-stained
And the devil's forever in my veins
And the devil's forever in my veins