Mickey

Mickey was institutionalized. He had just come off a seven-year prison sentence and was due for another of ten to fifteen whenever karma decided to get around to it. His teeth were broken into sharp little daggers from fighting, and when he smiled it was like staring into the mouth of a barracuda. When he was in prison, he was a warrior for the Arian Brotherhood, and he had the tattoos from head to toe to prove it. In the real world he was just a low-life junkie like the rest of us, but his mind was still locked up in a maximum-security cell of intransigence. I wish I had never met Mickey. Mickey was a psychopath.

At first, he was nice. I was naïve to think I could ask him for a favor without having to pay him back in exorbitant interest. I woke up dope sick one morning, and he was getting high in a cardboard camp he’d set up in the same alley way I called home every now and then. I asked for a get-well and he was all too willing to put me in his pocket.

I was known amongst fellow vagrants as a "booster". I had a very prestigious record of successfully shoplifting hundreds of dollars’ worth of items from stores without getting caught. I promised Mickey that after he got me well, we could go out and hustle together. I would do the heavy lifting while all he had to do was keep watch. I took on all the risk, he got high. He could barely stop from licking his lips and rubbing his hands together like some predatory lender handing out home loans for no money down during the 2008 housing crisis.

I hate myself for not being able to see what was coming. I was a junkie. I would compromise my safety, my life, my freedom, for a shot, no problem. Most of us traded our entire families for a feeling. But if I was possessed by addiction, then Mickey was possessed by a fucking demon.

The plan was to go to Bookman's, a local record store in Phoenix, and snag a stack of expensive records. Beatles boxsets, Aerosmith Limited Edition vinyl, items of that ilk. Stuff that would make a man in his mid-life crisis cream his skinny jeans. Then we would hop on the train, peel off the tags, and head two blocks down to Zia Records to sell them. I had done it before. It was a solid heist. I could pay Mickey back and still have around a half gram left for myself. We were one block away from our destination, so we walked.

"Do you like cats?" Said Mickey as we made our way.

"Depends on the cat."

"I hate cats. I killed every one of my sisters’ cats. She loved cats so she just kept getting new ones. One time I put one of them in the microwave just to see what would happen. I would chuck 'em down the stairs to see if they could land on their feet."

I think he was bragging.

The revelation that I was standing next to somebody who admittedly exuded the tale tell signs of a serial killer made me feel nervous. Thinking back, I still didn’t know the half of it. Alternatively, I found myself kind of wanting Mickey to accept me. Does that make me a monster? Or just a people pleaser? Or maybe I’m a monster-pleaser?

"Did they?" I said to him.

"What? Did they always land on their feet? No." said Mickey.

The scurry of the roaches under our shoes brought my attention to the time. Roaches only come out at night. As long as it wasn't Sunday, Bookman's was probably open for around three more hours. Should be plenty of time as long as it wasn't Sunday.

"What day is today?" I asked Mickey.

"Sunday" he said.

"Nah... Is today Sunday?" I said as the blood rushed from my face.

"Yep. Sunday." He assured me.

"Actually... I think… Bookman's is closed." I said.

Mickey stopped walking and turned to face me when he said, "Better come up with a new plan quick before I start getting really fucking mean with you. You owe me. I gave you the last of my shit and I’m gonna start getting sick soon."

His words skewered my heart. What had I gotten myself into? If blustering about murdering kittens was Mickey set to normal, I did not want to see him dope sick.

A quick reassessment of the plan brought me to Tide Pods, and good old Filly B's.

Here's the new hustle:

The sweet Latina women at the Filliberto's on 19th Ave and Dunlap are always buying Tide Pods at half-price. Those little puffy liquid pods were as good as gold to a junkie. Plus, Filliberto's is open for 24 hours. The second perfect heist.

I told Mickey the plan, and suggested we go to the grocery store a few streets over.

"There's an Albertson's right there across the street." Snapped Mickey.

"Oh, no, we can't hit that one. I tried to hit them up last night and the LP officer chased me across the parking lot. I'm not kidding; I think he is actually half-bionic" I replied.

"Get your ass in that fucking store and do what you need to do. I didn't get you high for free mother fucker." Snarled Mickey, gritting his barracuda-like teeth.

I always wanted to be able to sound tough like that. I quietly cursed God for engendering me with a lisp. I could tell he was serious, and I knew I only had two options: Either try my luck in the store with a monstrous loss prevention officer who would be sure to recognize me, or a hefty confrontation with my new "friend" Mickey. Both options were equally fucked.

I figured if I could walk quickly enough through the store, I could grab two large tubs of Tide Pods, and bust out through the emergency exits. They wouldn't even see it coming. Mickey agreed this would be the best plan of action. He would meet me by the emergency exit and act as back up against Robocop waiting for me inside. We emptied out Mickey's backpack to use as a grab-bag, then he let me borrow his hat to hide my face.

A few deep breaths, and I stepped into the eighth circle of hell.

My entrance was accompanied by the first loudspeaker code call. When you boost for long enough you begin to realize that each store has their own codes being called over the speaker for different situations. If a cashier saw a known thief, they would pick up the mic and call: "306 in isle blank". A good booster has each of these codes memorized. I used associations; "Code 306" meant "deep shit". Before I knew it, I was standing before a wall of vibrantly packaged laundry products. Technically, the loss prevention officer couldn't touch me until I put something in my backpack. Once I did, if I was caught, the charge goes from an F6 to an F4. That's five to seven before mitigating factors.

They called again, "Code 306... in isle 14"

I was standing in isle 14. The disquietude in the voice coming through the speaker was palpable. He was watching me on the cameras.

I thought for a moment, "I don't have to do this. I could go to prison. Maybe it’s time I get clean.”

A thought followed by a decision, "Not today. I'm not ready."

Turns out I had miscalculated the size of Mickey’s bag because I was only able to fit about two tubs of tide pods into it. Equal to $20.

"HEY!" the Robocop was already running at me with the full force of a linebacker on PCP.

I ran through the aisles of colorful, shiny, chip bags, boxes of cereal, and lady's tampons. I noticed there was a sale on almond milk. A flash of my ex-girlfriend imposed itself like a hard cut movie transition in my mind. She was the first and only girl I ever lived with. We would walk through the historic neighborhoods and dream of buying a house in the Roosevelt District. She drank almond milk. Those were the salad days. Before the black. Before the needles.

I felt a hand graze the hairs on my neck as I busted through the emergency exit. The loud shrill of electronic bells sliced through my ear drums, and then I noticed Mickey standing outside the exit with a four by four. He smiled that psychopathic barracuda smile and blindsided Robocop as hard as he could. That was the end of Robocop.

We ran through the bowel like alley ways of Central Phoenix to escape a tail that wasn't chasing us. The evening descended into the decay of a nighttime in the ghetto, and we were guided by nothing, but moonlight subdued by an atmosphere of polluted air. My blood rushed and caused odd parts of my body to pulsate. My ears traced heavy breathing, and the pounding of my paranoid heart, and then the sound of an ambulance siren in the distance. The bowels spit us out at the light rail stop on 19th Ave and Glendale.

I was still catching my breath when Mickey snatched the bag from my shoulders.

"I'll hold this.”

He looked inside and remarked, "All of that for some fucking soap."

"We can get $20 bucks for that, that's enough to pay you back." I responded.

"I just knocked that guy over the fucking head so you could get away. If I hadn't of been there you would be sitting in the back of a fucking cop car by now. You owe me more than $20." And just like that he raised the stakes.

That's when I realized I would not be getting away from Mickey anytime soon. Not without a fight. But that would mean I have to stand up for myself and I'm not very good with confrontation. I categorized myself as a flyer, not a fighter. In other words, I’m sort of a pussy. Just had to wait for the right moment to flee. I didn't want to be in a chase with Mickey on foot. Too much risk of him catching me. I had to disappear without a trace.

I decided I had one more store in me. I thought of it like a challenge. I wondered what it would take to impress him. If he wanted more, I could get him more. There was a Walgreens on the corner. No loss prevention, and it was full of employees with debatable vital signs. I remembered the lady at Filliberto's asking me for toiletries last time I was there. Women's razors, Dove Body Wash, Head and Shoulders shampoo. I could do one more store. I laid the plan out for Mickey.

“Nah.” He said, "We are done with your kid shit. I'm gonna show you how to hustle with the big boys."

Mickey brandished a hammer from the inside of one of his bags. The size of the hammer relative to the bag made it seem like some kind of fucked up magic trick.

"Hang on. What the fuck are we going to do with that." I said like an idiot -- I knew.

Mickey opened the trash can in front of the store and grabbed a hand full of empty, used, plastic bags, and he gave them to me.

Mickey raped the plan into concession: "You fill the bags with money, cartons of cigarettes, and any fucking thing else you can get your hands on, and DON'T be a pussy! If you get me caught up, I swear to God you do not want to share a jail cell with me mother fucker."

"Mickey. I can't do this." I said in a quiet protest.

It felt like I was struck by a flash of lightning and the world went white for a millisecond as Mickey's boney knuckles cut through the skin above my eye socket. I felt the flesh on my face rise. It occurred to me that in all my time as an addict I had escaped every physical confrontation through my superb ability to reason, or pure luck. Mickey embodied the definition of unreasonable and apparently, I was out of luck. This would have been a good time to swing back.

"Protect yourself you fucking pussy. Fucking stand up for yourself. Fight back. Fight back. Fight back!" I pleaded with myself, but my heart could not coax me into the fortitude it took to hit him back. Instead, I held back tears.

Mickey grabbed me by the neck and pinned me up against the wall as easy as he could a broom stick.

"You are going into that fucking store with me. If you fuck this up, I am going to drag you into that alley way over there and fuck you up the ass like the bitch that you are. You think I'm fucking joking?" He took my hand and forced it over the bulge in his pants. The act of overpowering me in physical altercation was making that sick fuck hard. “You feel that? Twelve inches mother fucker. I am NOT kidding. You want that in your ass?” The maniacal fervor in Mickey's voice made the corners of his mouth foam like a rabid dog. It suddenly occurred to me that there couldn’t be a God. Surely, if there was a God, he would not endow such a monster of a person with a twelve-inch penis.

"Jesus Christ! OKAY! LET GO! FUCK! OKAY. I'll go in." I said sheepishly with tears in my eyes. He broke me. I had never been so emasculated in my life. I was terrified.

The automatic doors parted and before they had a chance to close Mickey shouted, "OPEN THE FUCKING REGISTER!" He ran towards the cashier wielding the hammer like Dae-Su-Oh in Oldboy. The kid couldn't have been older than sixteen. His world was likely still filled with beauty, and warmth, and wonder. I wondered if he was a virgin, or if he had ever been in love. Now here he was face to face with, Mickey, who would forever dictate all his future perceptions of life in a moment with the business end of a hammer. Mickey struck him instantly, and it smelt like sulfur when the young man shit himself. Whether or not I made it out of that store without going to prison, no matter how far I ran to escape my inevitable demise, I would always be imprisoned the image of that poor kid’s lifeless body. Mickey probably would have kept his scalp for the novelty if we had more time.

"Fill the fucking bag you fucking fuck! Fill it! Fill it!" shouted Mickey vehemently.

I filled the bag with all the money in the register. About $200. I took every carton of cigarettes I could fit in the plastic bags. I noticed a few other employees crouched behind the isles hiding for their lives. Their eyes closed as if it would transport them into some other dimension of safety. I was scanning the area for anything Mickey might consider valuable when I noticed a boxcutter sitting on the counter. It occurred to me that perhaps this is where I was meant to be. Perhaps every little turn of every little event in my life brought me to this instant. That boxcutter was the key to the next chapter of my life and it was up to me to decide which prong of the fork in the road I would follow. I snatched it and kept it for myself.

Again, we were running through the bowels of the city and this time the sirens were like a wall of sound that surrounded us. They screamed and bent in pitch as they passed us on the street over. A ghetto bird flew above us, and the spotlight searched the city for one murderous junkie, and the pussy who bent over backwards out of fear. The cops would never see it that way. I was now the accomplice to a strongarm robbery, and possibly a murder. We hopped walls, and we hid in bushes. It’s beyond me how we lost them, but we did.

Mickey and I slept in a ditch behind our dope dealer’s house waiting for the next day to come. It was too late to pick up, and I wasn’t sure a dealer would be cool with us coming directly to their house just after committing a robbery anyways. The sunlight through the brittle branches of the desert brush woke us. We were both dope sick beyond all belief. Mickey's eyes drooped, and his lips curled from the internal fire that pushed its way like hot railroad picks through every pore in his body. A feeling that mirrored exactly what was happening in my own nervous system. I couldn't find in him even a hint of remorse from what had occurred the night before. I couldn’t really blame him, yeah, he was a sociopath, but I was having trouble feeling remorse myself, but for another reason. The fucked-up thing about dope sickness is that it covers up all other emotions. The sickness demands to be felt in all faculties of sensitivity, and the weight of it drapes over you like three hundred pounds of sheep’s wool. We both just wanted some dope.

Mickey got up and consolidated our take from the night before into one bag. He looked at me and said, "You pulled through kid. I'm proud of you."

How fucked up of a person do I have to be to have garnered a small sense of fulfillment from that statement? I did though. It occurred to me that that was the first time in my life somebody told me they were proud of me. Something clicked, and I realized Mickey was playing on every insecurity I had. I now knew what true hatred was. Before that I hated things like bad movies, and the girl that broke my heart in the sixth grade. Yeah, my parents left me in the custody of child protective services, but I didn’t hate them for it. I understood. I didn’t even hate the foster dad that raped me, or his wife who just stood there and did nothing. No. That was a moderate level of dislike compared to what I felt for Mickey in that moment. I thought we at least had some type of human relationship, fucked up as it was, at least it was human. But Mickey didn’t think of me as a human. I was nothing more than a tool to him. Nothing more than the bloodied hammer he’d used to bash that cashier’s skull. I hated Mickey with every fiber of my being for manipulating my biggest insecurity in order to fold me into whatever shape would fit the slot he needed to fill from one moment to the next. I remembered the boxcutter in my pocket and soothed myself by running my fingers over the rubber grooves in the handle. The lack of dope in my system sent a quick shiver down my spine, and the hair on my arms stood up. The blood running through my veins felt like it had dirt in it.

“Let’s go get some fucking dope.” I said.

The dope dealer we chose to camp out behind was Chamo. He was my resident Pysa. I would often camp out in the ditch behind his house if we were too late to pick up that night. I had clearance to hop the wall into his backyard, and I rapped on his back door. Chamo, was a short nickname for Chamuco, which was Spanish for devil. He lived up to his name, though not in the same way as Mickey. Chamo had good in his heart, but he knew how to reprogram his mind in a moment to turn bad. He was calculated about it, but purely for business purposes. Mickey was calculated too, but he was also pathological, and more innately evil. Things like rape, and blood, made Mickey sexually aroused. I had the inkling that this would disgust Chamo, and I wondered how they would get on. He came to the door and smiled when he saw me. If the events of the past day have taught me anything it’s that there were no friends in this world, but the relationship I had with Chamo resembled something close. Chamo liked me. Sometimes he would let me take showers at his house. Everybody else would steal from him, but I never did. I think he appreciated that.

We walked into the house, and Chamo’s newest girl was sitting on the couch with her feet up watching The Shining. She was still green. New to this life. Getting high was still fun for her. She barely had to hustle. All she had to do was lend out her pussy to Chamo whenever he summoned, and then she had all the dope she could possibly want. Sometimes I wonder where she is now… I wonder if she made it back to her family. I hope she did. She was sweet and good.

“Hey Lolita…” I greeted her.

“Shhh! I love this part!” She nipped in her mousy little voice as she recited the lines to the movie along with Jack Nicholson.

“I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya! I'm just going to bash your brains in. Gonna bash 'em right the fuck in! Ha ha ha!” She knew every word like she’d watched it a thousand times.

Mickey looked at me and smiled a sick little smile. The coincidence of how that exact line applied to recent events amused him.

Chamo sat down next to her and started selling, “Alright! So what can I do for you boys? I just re-upped. I got black and clear. I’ve got points. I’ve got everything you need. Fire as per usual.”

I started, “Can you do an ounce for two hundred?” when Mickey interrupted me by saying, “We’ve got cash, but I need a shot right fucking now. I am sick as fuck.”

Chamo looked at me like, “Who the fuck did you bring to my house?” and I looked back at him like, “You don’t know the half of it…”

Out loud I rephrased Mickey’s statement in the form of a polite question, “Can—May… we fix here?”

“Show me the money.” Chamo said.

Mickey threw the backpack at Chamo, from it he pulled cash, cartons of cigarettes, packages of gummy worms, portable chargers, and everything else I could think to throw inside of it during the chaotic smash and grab from the day before.

“What? Did you jack a 7/11?” He asked.

“A Walgreens.” I said.

Oh shit! I didn’t think you had that in you!” exclaimed Chamo proudly.

“He didn’t. I had to force it out of him. I found a man lurking beneath that thick layer of bitch.” Said Mickey.

There was that convoluted feeling of hatred underneath gratification again.

“Alright, here. Get well.” Chamo threw us each a point, and a shot of black.

Our hands shook violently as we held the spoons over the small flame of a Bic lighter. We made the shots thicker than blood. Strong enough to kill a crossbreed between Chris Farley and Kurt Cobain.

“I need you to hit me. My hands are too shaky.” Mickey demanded.

I was still trying to hit myself when I said, “Give me one second. I’ve almost got it.”

Mickey reached over and swatted the needle out my arm to the ground. Chamo and Lolita saw and I could read almost hear the disgust on their faces. Whether it was at me for being such a pussy, or Mickey for being such a dick will now always remain unknown.

I went to pick up my point when Mickey said, “Leave. It. There.”

I quietly turned to him, picked up his point, and aimed it at the largest vein in his arm.

“Nah. Hang on. You gonna let him talk to you like that?” Said Chamo disconcertingly. "Nah. That fool needs to get the fuck out of my house. You too, you fucking pussy. No bitches allowed. Bounce!” He said.

“Chamo. Don’t.” He had no clue of the beast he was summoning from the shallow depths of Mickey’s current state of calm.

Mickey looked up, with a calculated, cold, straight face. Chamo didn’t even have a chance to pull the pistol from his waist-belt before hopped over the table and mauled him. Blow after blow, he slept Chamo, and then woke him back up, and then slept him again. There was no way he was going to remember his own name after this. Mickey picked up the small pistol with a look that said, “Oh! Hey! Look what I found! A fucking gun!”

He looked at me and said with a peppy voice, “Hey bro! Check this out!”

From point blank range he shot Chamo in the face. All the while, Lolita was screaming as though she had never worn the splattered brain of another human being over her face before.

“Shut the fuck up!” Mickey screamed at her. She obeyed.

He pointed the gun in her face and said “Just chill. I still need to get well.” He looked at me, “So. Can you please fucking hit me now?”

He came over and sat down next to me with the pistol in his waste belt. I removed a shoelace from the loops on my shoe, wrapped it around Mickey’s arm to tie him off, and once again aimed the needle at a fat, tracked up, vein. I flicked the back of the plunger hard enough to pierce his thick, leathery skin, and a plume of red blood drew into the cartridge before I pressed the murky dope into his bloodstream.

“Ohhhhhh fuuuuuck.” He said as euphoria carried him, weightless, through the threshold of oblivion that only a shot of quality heroin can elevate you beyond. His eyes closed. For the first time, I had seen Mickey calm. With his guard down, he fell into a state of nod. I forgot Lolita was even there until she used the opportunity to bust out of the house.

It dawned on me that I could do whatever I wanted with him now. I had been running my fingers over the rubber grooves in the handle this whole time to self-soothe. I felt it click as I raised the blade from its plastic enclosure.

Click-click-click-click.

I felt the barrier of his skin, sort of, pop, as the blade stabbed into the side of his neck. In that instant he woke up. The next part was his fault. In an instinctual effort to evade whatever he thought was injuring him he jolted in the wrong direction and the blade sliced a smile shape into his jugular. He looked surprised.

“Surprised?” I said out loud to him.

He slowly stopped struggling. We never broke eye contact, and in the last few moments of his life he just smiled that evil, senseless, barracuda smile.

When he was gone, I picked up my needle and finally got to get myself well. Chamo was right. That shit was fire. I laid as still as the two corpses that laid on each side of me. Sirens sounded off in the distance. The neighbors probably called the cops about the gunshot. What a fucking buzzkill. I was done running though. All I wanted to do was enjoy my nod. It’s all about the pins and needles baby. It’s all about the pins and needles.