All I Got

Sara holds her phone in the vertical position as she steadies herself for the shot. In front of her sit three girls. Identical triplets. Donning princess dresses gathered around a birthday cake.”Lean in closer girls,” instructs Sara. Sara motions to them with her free hand. “You guys look so precious right now.”

A lit candle shaped in the fashion of a seven illuminates their faces. With gapped-tooth smiles they lean in over the birthday cake. It’s covered in white frosting with red lettering that reads ‘Happy birthday Shante, Simone, and Denise’.

An audible, fabricated click comes from Sara’s phone. Satisfied with the shot, looks around the living room for her husband. She spots him sitting on the couch in the living room. He’s leaning back with his gaze focused outside the large window that boasts scenic views of the city. The Atlanta skyline can be seen off in the distance.

“Danny,” she calls over to him. “Honey” Her words fall on deaf ears “What are you doing? You’re about to miss it.” Danny’s focus is on the sun, watching it slowly fall behind the horizon. She snaps at him, catching him off guard. “Danny!”

He turns his focus towards his wife and forces a smile. She shoots him a concerned look. Sara had never known him to be... aloof. She wondered if he had finally taken to smoking weed and felt betrayed that he would do so without including her. Annoyed yet slightly concerned, she coolly asks, “You good baby?”

Danny, back from wherever his mind had taken him, gets up from the couch and joins Sara and the three girls in the dining room. Sara studies his eyes as he approaches her for a quick peck on the lips, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “Of course,” he assures her, almost convincingly.

Avoiding Sara’s skeptical examination, he turns towards his girls seated at the table. They are bubbling with excitement. “You girls ready to finally get this party started?” he says with overt enthusiasm.

As the sun sets, the party commences as promised. The birthday song. The combined effort to blow out the candle. The cutting of the cake. The opening of the presents. Everything seems to go on as it should.

However, despite the fact that this should be a joyous moment for all involved, Danny feels something else, burrowed deep in his gut. While committing to the role of the “fun parent”, and doing it well, in actuality he is still in that other place, lost in thought. Detached from the whole event entirely.

Years as a listing agent had helped Danny refine his skillset of hiding what truly lay beneath. Even though he never really liked being in the company of others, he was great at wearing the required masks for given situations. From closing deals on million dollar homes to negotiating lucrative contracts with developers and builders, Danny never let how he really felt about others get in the way of his career.

This proved to work well enough for him. This house on the hill with a million dollar view of metro Atlanta was confirmation to how well he could dance in this masquerade he danced in on a daily basis.

Despite the love and total admiration he had for his life partner, he often had to wear a mask around her as well. The girls too. This facade he carried around his family was a constant source of anguish; he wished he didn’t have to but knew it was necessary.

It wasn’t any fault of theirs that he played this game of charades with the ones he loved. In fact, he loved them so much, more than anything in the world. And that’s precisely why he had to shield them from the darkness that he buried deep inside his core.

But today, during the small family celebration that he insisted on having without any friends or outsiders partaking in, his disguise was starting to crack. While Sara busied herself to record every angle and each passing moment of the girls in their regal attire, Danny couldn’t help but sneak constant, nervous glances towards the window. Always checking on the sun, anxiously watching it as sinks lower and lower in the sky.

As the vibrant reddish orange hue of the sky gives way to a deep, starless night sky, Danny visibly becomes more detached from everything around him. His mask couldn’t hide the fact that he was transfixed on watching every last remaining inch of the setting sun.

And finally, once the last ray of light succumbed to darkness, Danny held his breath. Anticipating. Expecting. What? He really didn’t have a clue. But deep in his gut, he was preparing for anything.

A hand on Danny’s shoulder brakes him from his trance ”Is everything OK?” The look of concern had returned upon her face. Even more so now. “You’ve been... somewhere else this whole time. I don’t think you even looked the girls way one single time as they opened their gifts.”

Danny’s mask is at it again. “You know how it is,” he responds calmly. “Deals to close. Loose ends to tie up. All the boring work stuff that I try not to worry you guys about.”

Sara, knowing he’s full of shit and lying to her face, chooses peace and doesn’t press him more. For now at least. She already decided that conversation can happen at a later time, once the girls have been put to bed. “The boxing gloves were a huge hit,” she points out.

Danny and Sara turn their attention to the girls. All three of them are in the midst of a free for all. Each girl with their respective gloves on; throwing wild haymakers and shoving one another onto the ground.

Danny laughs. “Of course they would be playing with those first. They are your daughters aren’t they?”

Sara punches Danny on his shoulder and he dramatically feigns that it hurts. Sara ignores his play acting and walks towards the girls “Ladies. Dresses off first. Then you guys can tear each other apart.” Breaking up the melee, she escorts them back to their room.

As they exit. Sara shoots him a look. The kind of look that non-verbally informs Danny that he needs to get his shit together. He suspects their may be more to the conversation later on as well. He smiles as they leave. He stays stationary. Standing in the living room alone.

With everyone gone, down comes the facade. His smile transforms into a look of sincere worry. Danny stands frozen with his back to the window, almost as if he’s afraid to turn around and look into the night. Afraid of what he might see if he did turn around. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting to see. But he was almost certain there would be something.

And it doesn’t take long for his anxiety to be answered. Faintly, a buzzing sound is heard from outside. Danny unwillingly turns to the window to see what the noise is. He nearly shrieks aloud when he spots something off in the distance.

As the buzzing increases in volume, a small drone emerges from the darkness. And trailing behind it like a weightless pendulum in the wind, is a rope carrying a small package.

Danny quickly closes the curtains. He waits. And listens. And waits.

From outside his window, the buzzing sound of the drone grows louder. He’s almost certain it’s going to crash into the window, bracing himself for impact, when suddenly, the buzzing stops.

Dead silence. Danny almost begins to wonder if he’s imagining the whole thing.

Shiftless. Sweating. Scared Shitless. Danny stands like a statue at the window, behind the curtains, for what feels like an eternity.

After feeling as if enough time has passed, be it minutes, hours, he had no way of knowing for sure, Danny finally musters up the courage to peek outside the curtain.

He finds no sign of the drone anywhere.

Cautiously Danny creeps over to the front door and opens it, looking for any signs of the drone, yet finding nothing.

Maybe it had all been in his head after all?

Before closing the door to go back in the house he looks down to find a small box laying at his feet. Holding his breath, he carefully gathers up the package, as if it is the most precious, fragile thing he has ever held within his hands.

There’s nothing spectacular about it. Just an ordinary box. About the size of an alarm clock radio. Yet Danny does everything he can not to drop it, as his hands begin to tremble.

Sweating buckets and shooting glances back into the house every now and then, Danny meticulously opens the box. When he folds the top up, his eyes grow wide. His heart drops into his stomach.

Once upon a time, many years ago. Before the three beautiful girls. Before the house on the hill. Before the loving wife. Before the prosperous career as a top selling real estate Agent. Before he was Danny. Before all of these things, he was simply D-Bo.

And who was D-Bo? D-Bo was a kid who had lived on the street all his life. He never knew who his parents were, just that, for whatever reason, he was dropped off at an orphanage in an unseen part of Atlanta’s most run down and notorious neighborhoods.

Once he became of age, he took the path that was common for kids from his neighborhood and became a runner for the local street pharmacists who operated in shady alleys and corner stores. Whenever someone came for their prescription and the fee was paid, D-Bo would be called upon to bring the requested medication and hand it to them personally.

Amounts and the type of medication needed would be communicated to D-Bo by a system of whistles, cat-calls, and a plethora of other clever coded tactics. When needed, he would come around the corner or out of some hidden trap house.

It was dangerous work, but work that D-Bo did with obedience and steadfastness. Whether it be crack cocaine, black tar heroin, or whatever the latest hype was, D-Bo never screwed up an order. And when he would get caught by the cops, he never said a word. He would do his time in Juvie, without a complaint, and eventually find his way back to doing the same exact thing once he had served his sentence.

Growing up the way he did, the guys he worked with on the corner became the closest thing he ever had to a family. And he would rather die than to let them down or risk losing any of them to the justice system.

Eventually, D-Bo became progressively better at his craft, to the point where he would never get caught. And how to finesse the cops and get rid of the stash when they ever did try to rain on his parade. He became so well adjusted to running for the street pharmacist, that he eventually became one himself before the age of 16. And he didn’t want anything else in life.

But one fateful day, while he and an associate, who shall remain nameless, were busy at work, a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart rolled right up in between the two of them. She was dressed in ragged torn up clothes, and had a dingy hooded cape that covered her face in a shadow. Her cart was filled to the brim with worthless junk that only seem important to junkies.

D-bo and his associate didn’t pay her any mind; homeless people, crackheads, and fiends of every sort crossed their paths all the time. They casually stood by, waiting for her to pass.

However, she did not pass. But instead, without looking up from her cart of junk, her face downcast and still covered in shadow, she reached out a hand and asked “spare some change please?”

D-bo ignored her while his associate laughed aloud. “Bitch, you better change directions and head that way. We don’t do handouts over here.” He shoved her cart back, almost knocking her off balance.

Steadying herself, she slowly crept in between them once again. This time she held her hand out to D-Bo. With a voice, weak and barely audible she implores, “anything?” D-bo looked at the woman with disgust but didn’t say a word. Before he had a chance to deny her, his associate kicked over her cart sending her junk and her sprawling to the ground.

“Pick your shit up and carry the fuck on,” his associate told her, incredulously. "The nerve of this knock. I swear we ain't getting paid enough for this.”

They both shared a laugh for a quick second, when suddenly the lady leaped up off the ground, sending her cape into the sky. Her face, fully exposed by the streetlights, was leathery and old, and appeared to be melting off her skull. Her hair, wild and long, shined silver in the moonlight.

D-Bo and his associate stood amazed and bewildered at the sight. Coming to his senses, D-Bo’s associate tried to reach for a gun tucked in his waistline. But before he had the chance to pull it out, the silver haired woman touches his forehead with her index finger. D’Bo watched in horror as his friend fell to the pavement. Dead with his hand still on his waist.

Without waiting another second. D-Bo turned to run, but the silver haired lady shrieked “Stop!” with a voice that exploded like thunder. Frozen by some unknown force, D-bo couldn’t move an inch further. “Turn around” she commanded. D-Bo, unwillingly did as she requested.

“On your knees,” she demanded. Again, D-Bo abided without resistance. From where he knelt, he watched in horror as she gravitated towards him, only to stop right above him. Under the folds of skin that seemed to want to melt more and more off her face, he could see her eyes, red with rage.

“What do you want?” he cried out. “I’ll give you anything.”

She laughed aloud, with a laugh that sounded like a chorus of voices working in unison. Using the same finger she killed D-Bo’s associate with, she shoves her long sharp fingernail into his left shoulder blade, carving an unholy engraving into his skin. D-Bo screamed in pain from her touch as it scorches his skin like a hot iron.

Finally content with her work, she pulls her hand back. D-Bo doubled over onto the pavement writhing in pain.

The silver haired woman looked down on him with joy. She bent down close to his body on the pavement and whispers. “I want it all. Everything you got.”

Between sobs, D-Bo responds, “take it. It's yours. Just don’t kill me please.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out stacks of hundred dollar bills wrapped in rubber bands, tossing them at her feet. “Take it all.”

Again, she laughed with her legion of voices. “ Oh yes I will take it all, but only when you have everything to lose.”, she explains with a sly grin. “I'll come for it all when the sun sets on the seventh birthday of your three precious daughters. That’s when I’ll take it all. The house. The wife. The girls.”

And then she disappeared into the night. Vanishing into thin air. Leaving D-Bo, confused and in excruciating pain.

Since that day, D-Bo never forgot the words that came out of her mouth. For a while he thought it was just a bad trip; maybe he had smoked a laced blunt, making him hallucinate. But the evidence of his dead associate had convinced him this was not true.

And from there, he did everything he could to thwart the promise of this dark prophecy. Starting with getting as far away as he could from the lifestyle he had known. He stopped going by D-Bo and told people to call him by his birth name, Danny, thinking just maybe that would be good enough to keep her from ever finding him again.

He would change his life around and become someone brand new, a complete opposite from what he had been before. He also reasoned with himself that if he never married or had kids then there was no possible way that he would ever see her again.

If he had stuck to the plan, maybe it would have worked. But time has a way of making us forget some of the things we promise ourselves in the past.

When he fell in love with Sara, the dark prophecy couldn’t have been more than ramblings from a crazy old hag, he convinced himself. He was meant to marry this woman.

And when she gave him triplets, he almost laughed at the irony, but was almost certain nothing would ever keep him from raising this family of his.

But on the day of their seventh birthday, the day she said she would come, all the fear and dread had crept back into his mind.

And standing there with the box in his hand he touches the scar on his shoulder; the unholy marks she left behind seemed to bleed fresh.

Trembling almost uncontrollably, he peers into the box one last time. In the box is a note. On it is the same exact mark she carved into his flesh. And beneath it is a sentence that reads,”I want it all.”

Danny closes his eyes and tries to control his shaking hands. Breathing deeply, he begins to control his thoughts. He laughs to himself. Chill Danny. Everything is going to be alright.

Somewhere, out there in the dark sky above. A legion of voices begin to laugh along with him.