𝕷𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖊𝖍𝕿 𝖙𝖊𝖊𝕸 𝕴 𝖞𝖆𝖉 𝖊𝖍𝕿

lived eht teem ! yad ehT

Every day until conclusion there is a curfew in place by the mayor. A murderer has been on a spree for a week. A regional manhunt is amongst the community. The streets were consumed by military vehicles, harboring out of shape police, busting the stich of their navy seal tactical gear. Cadaver dogs sniffing the streets for the assured string of daily victims. Every day the suburb of what is stereotyped as white America. Now occupied with more Chinese and Indians, dot, not scalps. I hated living anywhere else but this expanding suburb. Most of my passion for this city came from how disconnected stereotypes remained. As a photographer for the local police coroner. I knew most of the lead homicide detectives and Drug task force agents by first hand. I even sat at many family dinners with the later, alike some observational respects between mafia hierarchy. Each had stories of each other like they were Francis or Brando. I enjoyed being the Rickles of these dinners. I made people smile with every photo. Alike the families I took photos, the polar opposite of my reality was the grim realities of my profession.

​The fifth day of this murder’s spree, the news was headlining national attention. The curfew was set in place for sunset. The community was not in favor to impeding the tactics of influencing the discovery of this river of blood. The first was a Priest, sitting on his presider. Presiding among empty pews and the poor altar boy whom showed early to stage the Sunday mass. The Priest lungs were torn from his back and hung above his head. They Diverged atop the arms of a golden cross that posted on the altar behind his throne. A Viking ritual known as the “blood eagle” is what I was told by investigating law enforcement. The stained-glass lighting graced my photographer eye in an unconscious psychotic enjoyment of evidence transfiguring to art. The most disturbing fact was the castration and the overflown tabernacle chalice filled with blood and the missing sexual organs. The Victim sat with no binds, no rope, just the Torture and Murder. The coroner later told me that the priest was injected with succinylcholine. He sat there paralyzed as he watched the maniac mutilate his holy temple. An ivory Double Six domino left inside the priest paralyzed open mouth.

​The second was to my own a guilt a person I called a friend of mine. Dead under the lobby of his own hotel in his office. Six flat head screwdrivers eight puncture wombs. Two hollow wombs at the brain stem, one screwdriver at the base of the back of the skull. Two gaping the metatarsals of each hand pinning him to his desk with inhuman strength. Three handles donning his head like a crown of acrylic handles. The Journey song, “Don’t Stop Believing” playing in the background. Leaving a more unsettling knowledge of fact to my own personal past of unease. Another ivory double six domino left on the bloody table.

​The third was a former professional football player, nobody has been found yet. The only lead is a voice message prompt. A manufactured message made by a series of random movie clips, “…What’s in the box? Jamaica! The Beach!” No footage from traffic cameras has evidence of the car arriving at Jamaica beach. The police found a gutted football with a double six ivory domino and twelve fingernails and toenails.

​The fourth victim and most disturbing up to this point. An unidentified woman was walking around the retail and restaurant center of the town that the previous victims lived. She was said to have asked up to 10 people, “was she was alive? where she was?”. The most disturbing fact, the last person she asked was the lead investigating detective. She asked him if she knew where the stairs to parking garage were. Just as the detective got his bread and butter. Loud screams and a group of fleeing women, children, and men from the proximity of fear. The detective rushed to the surrounding crowd in shock. The confused women laid in a pool of her blood, folded in half. She had jumped from the top of the parking garage. The same parking garage he had just directed her too. A double six ivory domino was drenched in blood next to the unidentified body.

​The morning of the 5th day I had been in conversation on hex chat with a potential buyer of the photos I took. The username 1300d4mar4, negotiated under my terms for $20,000 in gold Kuggerands for all evidence that I have collected. Plus, another mirroring amount for any continued evidence. With confluence to my daily routine. I ordered my coffee online that morning. Adjacent to the coffee shop was the hotel lobby we agreed to meet. I stored the USB in my mouth to swallow, if it was a sting. 1300d4mar4 was drinking a Bloody Mary at the bar…

gnissaP nI : liveD ehT teeM I yaD ehT

“Fucking Suburbs, Sooo fucking depressing.”, gripping my Bloody Mary closer.

“America … This culture of procrastination, unconscious action, submissive to fiscal limits, cucks in their silicon dreams. Their kingdom charged by a battery and conquerors of none. I wish I could go back in time and be the one to secure the Zimmerman telegram.”

Hunched over the bar and halfway through his own Bloody Mary. Sal overcompensated his hulk frame while raising a Salute to me through the mirror in the bar. A bit of the blood from my Santa Muerte spilt as he knocked my elbow.

Sal put down his drink and began apologizing grabbing napkins from behind the bar.

“It’s ok. Leave it we will go take Celia shopping. I’ll get a change of clothes then.”

“Look!” Sal pointed behind me out the window. Two big breasted thirty something blonde hair white women walked by in their designer clothes and looking more important than they actually are.

“Getting these bitch wives to cheat is worth every second of torture in this country…” taking another swig of my drink, “… Not worrying about being assassinated is another plus!”

Sliding the peppers of the cracks in my gold teeth. My beautiful brown smile coupled with the hopes of fucking a desperate house brought a joy to my heart equal to my love for murder. My love was always a contender to my pound for pound Champion, Revenge.

“Feliz! Olvídalo carajo. I can’t wait to rape Mitchells bitch wife. That washed up country singing faggot, I hope that fucker doesn’t kill himself before i can rub the video in his face.”, Sal laughed at my endless psychotic behavior.

The Red restaurant door opened from the lobby of the hotel. A tall athletic gringo locked the door from behind him. With his back facing us, he wiped his mouth. Inhaling to exhale a deep breath then he turned.

My previous freedom of assassination was just a façade. You can’t stop thinking about that when you wear the size 11 ostrich boots, I wear.

I clutched the revolver grip pressed under my left hamstring. His left hand tilting a sip of coffee. Unseen to us form the bar his right hand. Our view obstructed by the booths, he was just about to walk or draw. Sal was ready to fire as well. The gringo raised the cup from his lips in salutations.

In praise; A cognitive plan between two strangers, executed as communicated.

“Top of the Morning!”

“Ay! Toma tu mano de tu bolsillo”, Sal raised his voice toward the gringo.

The black leather alligator barstool swiveled to my left. I watched D3VTH53Y3 come to me as Spicoli. In my mind he looked like an Asian or some hipster African.

D3VTH53Y3 among the living and in the flesh.

“You gringos and your franchise non-caffeinated caffeine.” Sal shook his head with a smirk, “How much was that large non-sense, eighteen dollars.”

The sound of his nostrils concentrating to sniff a mound of cocaine from his truck keys. I could hear his keys rattling in his lap as he still watched the young photographer approach.

“Pleasure is mine, Gentleman.” Extending his left hand to mine. As Sal hands were busy.

Unhinged by our normalcy he stood back, “So should we move to a table?”

I slapped Sal and commanded him to move around to the bar.

“Have a seat puta! What’s with the jacket? Expecting rain? hurricane season is not for another month no?”

“I trust Agent Freeman, your spy in the sheriff vice unit, as much as I trust a Filipino taxi driver. Jail is cold and if his phony ass was setting me up. I’m not going to be the one requesting a blanket.”

Before taking Sal’s seat. He placed his coffee on the bar ahead of his chair. Unzipped his jacket and placed it next to his coffee.

Rotating his chair toward the bar, He continued his first impression by looking to his right and in my eyes. No one looks me in the eyes. No one who knows me. This gringo was different there was something in his eyes, more than death. Something…

“… well, I guess I am a month early for the eye of the storm.”

“Ya nos cayo el chahuiztle!” I said turning to Sal.

“Yall have mushrooms?” the gringo asked. His smile was murderous, as if Sal had a kilo of coke to himself in a hotel room. His insomnia was evident under his eyes. He wasn’t anxious though. Just a hustler.

“YALL …” Sal recreated the Southern trait. The two of us grinned at each other and refocused back on the white boy. Sal hunched over the bar, imposing his physical strength. His presence was enough to rival an aircraft carrier, “Verdaderamente! Patron. Ya nos cayo el chahuiztle!”

“A secret Conquistador, I am not. The family of my ex-girlfriend would say that every time I would visit.”, the gringo explained.

He stood on the bar stool foot bridge, reaching over the bar. He pulled up a bottle of Irish cream. He scalped the lid off his cup and loaded his coffee.

“It’s no Horchata … It’s your hotel right. I mean you are one of those in the shadow investors.”, he placed the bottle on the bar and swiveled the chair toward me.

“Like I said, Freeman told me that yall were looking for the forensic recreations of the serial killer. The USB he gave me to load the photos has another document attached. He said it was encrypted. Coming from him I imagine it’s not. But regardless I didn’t try and open the file. He told me to tell you, ‘Last Summer in Autumn.’ I imagine that’s some sort of hint to the decryption … so … any other missteps are on him”

The gringo reached into his jacket pocket. Pulling out the USB, he placed the hardware between me and him.

“Bueno!”

“Todo … “, He Rotated away from the bar and sneezed into his PSG long sleeve jersey.

The gringo exhausted the most energy he might have accumulated for the rest of the month.

“Gringo what is it with you. You don’t look sick. You don’t look healthy, You seem frail, But at the same time you seem strong. I don’t say the much to people.”, I signaled Sal to give him so napkins.

“Deberías limpiarte el culo con esa camiseta también.” Sal said as he tossed some napkins at the gringo.

Sal unzipped his fanny pack and stuck the car keys back into his cocaine sack for another bump.

“Really?”, The gringo said still looking away and reaching for the napkins to wipe away what ever shot out of his mouth and nose.

Sal tossed the truck keys in the fanny pack and closed the Ziploc bag. He then pulled out two tubes of gold Libertads and placed them next to the bottle of Irish coffee. His big hand clawed up the USB and dropped it inside his fanny pack.

The gringo wadded up the napkins, stood back up on the stools foot bridge. Tossed the napkin into the trash can behind the bar. Turning out of his jacket he pulled out some anti-bacterial and washed his hands.

“Those look like Libertad tubes. Thought I said kuggerands but it’s all good.”

“Que?”, Sal said.

“Nada Lurch …”, He looked back to uncap the tubes, unphased by any disdain Sal would have toward his insult. But it was over Sal’s head, alike the cameras he disconnected prior to this meeting. I could careless if management catches us in here. I would rather there not be in proof of the gringo being seen. In the event I would need his skills in the immediate future.

I began to admire the Putas balls or his abuse of Prozac.

I could not be ignorant to the Americans meticulous behavior.

“Industrious, active investigation … celebrity and clerical deaths … national attention … Cerrar Los Ojos. How did you know there would be a market for this kind of sick shit?”.

The American removed the cap from one of the tubes, “My generation were the babies of the internet, content is in everything and for all kinds of people. If it bleeds it leads, all these news companies would love this content. But they can’t pay what you can.”

“Cash is King!”, Sal said grinning.

The coins jingled onto the gringo’s hand.

“Vintage nice! Forgive me for my pettiness just now. Cash certainly is king mi amigo! Its actually what life is all about, contrary to whoever thinks different. Either they are dead or on the school buses around this neighborhood.”

“Asi es La Vida, Plata y Plomo Puta!”, Sal began mixing another round of Bloody Mary’s.

The gringo reversed the stack back into the tube. He gathered his hand soap and put them all inside his jacket pocket.

He raised his coffee cup again to toast. Replaced the cup back on the bar. With half of his Irish coffee diminished and his score with in his possession. He pushed his bar chair back to stand.

“Very well Gentlemen … I can now admit, without embarrassment, that during my time on Earth. I was called a bitch, by the Mexican Ronnie Coleman, who at the time was wearing a fanny pack and drinking a Shirley Temple. What the fuck are you two drinking anyway?”

I chuckled a bit, but then felt bad for the gringo for never having a bloody mary. I then remembered to give the gringo a new pre-paid phone.

“Shirley Temple … Puta. It’s a Bloody Mary! From the chat! Here take this phone!”

I placed the phone atop the bar and extended my left in partnership.

Exchanging flesh, we both smiled, and he took the phone. Sal placed the two fresh Bloody Mary’s on the bar.

“Patron! Your willingness to pay for the forensics has nothing to do with your …” He stopped his conspiracy of thought.

I smiled at his acknowledgement of the ‘need to know’.

He collected his jacket, gold, coffee, and hand soap. In passing, he began chugging the remainder of his drink. At the end of the bar he filled his coffee with the free pot of coffee that was just placed there by the illegal kitchen employee.

“Shirley Temple!” He turned as I called out toward him.

“That me now? Keep paying me like this, you can call me whatever you want.”, His cup was three quarters full. He turned back at both of us and eyed Sal to tend him the Irish Cream bottle still on the bar.

Sal reached with his right arm and exchanged to his left. Without moving his feet, he placed it on the bar. Just before he could slide it to me. The boss man stopped him.

“Come try this gringo?”

He took the Bloody Mary from my hand took a gulp and moved his lips back and forth.

“Wow! That’s fucking amazing! Damn for a big man you have some use other than the obvious.”, He filled the remainder of his coffee cup with the Irish Cream.

“Call the number I programmed the instant you know the location of the 6th murder.”

“Si, Patron! ‘Time is money. Wasted time, means wasted money, means trouble.’ I’m your Ojos Senor!”

“Which one of your chemically imbalanced rappers said that?”.

Walking opposite from the lobby entrance toward the street where they had just saw the sexy desperate housewives, “I am pretty sure Shirley Temple said that…”.

Shirley stepped out onto the street and before i could look again at the interesting character, he was gone.

The red door near the lobby shook. I heard someone mumbling in disorder. Some keys jingled and the I heard the door unlock.

“Excuse me … Hey!”

“It’s the new food and beverage manager.”, Sal said.

“Santa Muerte! Milagros de la Muerte” giving my best interpretation to Sal’s paranoid thought process.

The manager was on a warpath. Storming toward the bar, he remained disrespected, ignored, and unrecognized.

“Hello! I asked yall a question! Who the fuck … are you? We are closed how…” The manager seized to the size of Sal walking around the bar.

“You know about the black diamond fund account here”, I asked with a beautiful golden brown smile.

He raised his hands as Sal walked past me, taking his seat.

“That’s how you talk to strangers at your bar? Tell your boss to call in his other Manager for today, you don’t work here anymore. Tell Mitchell we will be at the bar or in the presidential suite, if he needs an explanation. If you think I am kidding, and you don’t leave. I’ll cut your fucking head off.”

2300

The prepaid phones artificial light emitted a magnetic resonance. I could see the backlight emission receiving text after text, from behind my closed eyes.

Impurity too our black mass and the candle lit room. Sal’s mistress was burning sage and sequencing incantations of protection. I channeled my Gnosis from beyond. I felt my limits of humanity become. In reverence, I apologized to Santa Muerte.

I clutched my talismans of Bald Eagle bones tighter. I stored the purple velvet bag of bird bones within my jacket pocket. Reopening my eyes to Deaths world. Something had changed.

I picked up the phone and read the incoming and received text messages.

“Shirley … He says the Sugar Factory!”, I ran to the Presidential suite bedroom for my boots and my mac-11.

“Patron that is not far. I’ll get the truck.”, Sal slipped his shoes on and was already heading down to valet.

His last text read, ‘Situation is active. Bring Guns several cops are dead, I’m stranded.’

“Vamos Sal! Let’s gut this cock sucking 616 piece of shit Sicario.”, I stomped my boots on as i stepped back into the rooms lounge. The Mac-11 was strapped around my chest and hung to my left. I put on my white snakeskin jacket concealing the SMG. Celia was yelling at me that Sal was already downstairs. I went to my duffle bag and grabbed the colt .45 and placed it in the back of my white snakeskin pants. Grabbed another Mac-11 clip and stuffed it in my back pocket. Zipping up the bag I grabbed the handles and started running for the door.

“Celia! Gather are things we are probably checking out of this shit hole soon!”

0300 - Sabbath

I woke up! Covered in blood. I had no Jacket or Mac-11 on my body. I couldn’t see an inch of white from my pants and my ostrich skin boots were squishing with warm liquid as if I just walked across the Rio Grande.

I reached for my talismans. It was gone. No weapons. My Crocodile leather diamond belt gone.

The floor was warm, as if there was a raging fire below me. The air was cold and smelled like vinegar - apple vinegar – Mandrake … Mandrake? Satan’s Apple … The Ivory … and Mandrake?

A Loud echoing of clanks was heard throughout the factory. The deduction of my eerie surroundings and a constant reverberation throughout the foreman loft, leveled my tough guy persona.

I Searched for a weapon

I heard whispers coming from a corner of the loft. The light from the bright red sugar factory sign gave me some sense of presence. On the top floor, I looked toward the suburb’s city hall lights. I could see our hotel next to the city hall. The whispers remained constant, as did my sense of being hunted.

Guided by the sound, my creaking steps, made me step without pattern, closer and closer. I could tell it was Sal but had no idea what he was chanting. Behind a pallet of half stacked Canvas bags. In the reddish shadows of the dim lit loft, I saw Sal. His back to the corner of the loft. Sitting in the corner his legs stretched out in front of him.

He was holding an amputated hand.

The fingers of the hand wearing his mistress rings. I slipped on the puddles of blood and my weight had deterred all attempts to remain unnoticed.

Sal looked at me with tears in his eyes. Hopelessness on his face. His limp muscular body cradled the hand like a child

“Sal! Puta!” I whispered.

Shaking his head and cowering his knees to his chest. He hugged the mistress hand to his chest like a teddy bear.

“Qué diablossss!”, I held my breath, the mandrake must have made Sal mad.

“Sal, say something…”

“Nein, Di – Di – Die Attentater des Kaisersss.” Sal sucked in air, after an uncontrollable error of language. He moved his knees to his chest. Keeping himself quiet with her lifeless fingers pressed against lips. His eyes moving side to side. He let out a series of shushes.

My remaining ability to maintain some sort of hope evaporated. My stomach was a pitfall of fear. My eyes wide, I slowly walked backward to the corner opposite of Sal.

In the shadows of the dark. I watched Sal ignore me as I drifted back. He began chanting in whispers to the hand again.

Echoes of clanking metal, from catwalks and handrails magnified in my ears. My equilibrium became disoriented and I had no cognition of my escape. The closer it seemed to get. The more my ears began to feel like peroxide fizzing in the canal. The fizzing was static, static to water, my mind was a remote for someone else’s chaos. My Breathe, the continued chanting of Sal, and the scavenging footsteps of the killer were mute. I had become deaf and kidnapped by fear.

I began to plead with god to save me from my past.

I closed my eyes I could not accept the exodus of my ruin.

My rebellious practice of black magic had been abandoned. I was merely a conduit for evil, A Martyr. My whole life, I worshiped evil to justify my ego. With no regard to the origin of evil. Its perverse need for blood that I blindly supplied.

I opened my eyes awaiting my Demons.

“Shirley!”, phantom sounds in my deaf ears.

Shirley was standing naked before the door. Entranced by the red light. He stared out toward the hotel, as I just did. Covered in blood, his breath was unnatural, heavy, and his ribs appeared to be protruding out of his skin. I looked at Sal. He remained sitting on the floor in the corner. Clutching the amputated hand tighter. Shaking his head to Shirley and begging to beg for his life. His mouth moved, and I heard nothing. It appeared that Shirley did not hear his cry for mercy as well.

I shut my eyes once more to escape this nightmare. With a count to ten, I opened them again.

Sal was now upside down in the corner. Held up by some invisible force. The platform of canvas bags was now across the loft. Sal was reaching for the bloody hand. That was now resting on the blood-soaked floor. The possessed photographer reigned beneath his prey.

Sal reached toward my direction.

The gringos head began to turn counter clockwise. Alike the bar chairs we had first meet. His neck twisted one hundred and eighty degrees. I watched his red glowing presence illuminate brighter. His eyes where black voids, his eye sockets, cried with blood. His head moved like an owl. His right arm raised a double-bladed spear, in front of his chest. He held the blade with both hands in the middle of the spear.

My mind began hearing more whispers from an unknown source. The spear sigils glowed grey and smoked black from the under his hands. The loft echoed with the snap as he separated the spear into two pieces.

His bleeding eyes saw right through the dark. My sanctuary of shade became his killing field.

That same murderous smile.

“Ya nos cayo el chahuiztle”.

My mouth moved with the force of a whisper. Again, my voice a phantom thought.

Without control of my own body. I began to stiffen alike sleep paralysis. I levitated in the corner. Upright, my arms spread like jesus on the cross.

The white devil was still smiling. Without warning and a unreal velocity. His right arm threw one of the blades into the skull of Sal. His head was still hovering above the ground. His legs stiff in the air. As fast as the spear tip stuck to the floor and inside Sal’s head. Whatever unseen force that held his body inverted, was non-existent.

The unseen force had let gravity drop his body over his powerless neck. Sal folded onto the ground his neck. The contorted spine was twisted opposite to his head nailed to the floor staring at Me. Shirley began to walk my direction.

My approaching doom and the violent horror surrounding, had made my cock hard.

Sal’s body combusted into a black flame.

The room was a brighter grey and muted the red neon light from outside. My death was even more ominous and beyond any scope of reality that I could have ever dreamed.

My jaw began to open without cerebral command.

The flesh connecting my lower jaw to the upper half of my head began to tear.

The pain unmanageable and my eyes were and ocean of tears. My tongue began to dangle. I could feel my lower jaw cracking and dislocating, now merely hanging by only what little flesh could hold. A phantom sensation felt as if my teeth were grinding together still.

A green cloaked creature emerged from Sal’s melting carcass. A hooded demon stepped from a hell into my private one. Pulling the dagger from Sal’s skull, in stride toward me. I was lowered by the force holding me up.

As I hovered down. My heart burdened the force of the sword from Shirley’s left hand. A long blade pinned me to the wall. I looked down at the Ivory handle connected to my exploded heart. A sigil design resembling the mandrake flower. My far sight vision blurred, I coughed blood up my esophagus and down my limp tongue. A black flame engulfed my departing existence. The green cloak of the demon walked through my nude executioner. Shirley had disappeared, and they formed as one.

He smashed the cracked hilt of the spear from Sal’s skull, onto the end of the one pinning me to the corner of the room. His grey black flesh clutched to the daggers. The ivory handle fused as black smoke rose from his claws. The smoldering smell of mandrake. Unaffected by the flames melting my clothes and my flesh together. The demon looked up at me, peering down at him. I only saw ivory tusk curling up from the demons’ veil of darkness. His hooded skull remained unseen. I began to rise higher toward the ceiling. My sternum cracked; the blade sliced my body down through my groin. I watched my insides pile below my feet.

A proprioception of falling and the denial of my demise. My reality was a gradual portal that reduced in size the deeper in depth I drifted away. The glowing red light was still visible. The silhouette of the demon stood before the diminishing world I was vanquished from.

A strobing white light began to flash. With each flash, I sank further away from the life I used to live.