Lincoln of the Zig Zag Boondocks

Where the upper-middle class suburbs and the gloomy stacks of the industrial complexes met laid Lincoln. He kept his head cradled in the rough canvas of his backpack as the shadow of the tree he was under slowly disappeared into the darkness of approaching dusk. He was waiting for nightfall; the brightening headlights of passing cars let him know it was coming soon. He didn’t want to go home so he stayed outside. Given he had just recently graduated high-school and relinquished the option of college he stayed out, giving his mom the illusion he was doing something with his life.

The sun finally fell behind the mountains and just as he was getting up to leave, a squirrel scurried to his feet, “Excuse me,” It said excited with news. Lincoln looked down on the squirrel, “Yeah?”

“I noticed you here all day and thought you could make use of something I just found. I’ll take you to it.”

Lincoln thought about it and decided there was no harm in hearing the squirrel out. They walked to a nearby park and the squirrel ran up a tree, “Here.”

The squirrel pointed it’s head towards the base of the tree. Lincoln stepped closer and saw a knife on top of a case.

“Oh, I don’t want anything to do with that,” Lincoln stated.

“You don’t know what that is do you?” The squirrel questioned.

“No.”

“That belongs to the Prophet of the Zig Zag Boondocks.”

Lincoln chuckled, “That guy doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, yes he does! I know you’ve heard the stories.”

“Yeah… but they’re just legend. No-one actually believes them; just bedtime stories.”

After going back and forth on whether or not the Prophet of the Zig Zag Boondocks actually existed, Lincoln finally accepted it and listened to the squirrel. It told him that if he took the prophet’s knife, and the case, to Aldrich of The 3rd Street, he would be initiated as a part of the gang. The squirrel somehow knew Lincoln was in a transition, but Lincoln thought nothing of it. He was consumed in the feeling that he was finally getting the chance to belong to something, to be someone other than the person he presently was, so he went to The 3rd Street with little hesitation.

The closer Lincoln got to 3rd Street the more he began to lose his sense of urgency, like maybe his decision should change. Ultimately, however, he attributed the rise of hesitance to fear, something he either worked past or let grow past himself, so he trudged forward. Once he arrived to 2nd Street he could guess which house belonged to Aldrich. There were a myriad of people standing outside a building that was Olympus compared to the runoff surrounding.

Lincoln took each step more timidly than the last as he passed row after row of the gallery of goons. They looked down on him as if he were a rodent in their dining room, disgusted and distrustful, yet they also looked with a gaze of curiosity as to how he had the prophet’s knife. They were all aware of the value that the knife held, but they were also aware of the cost that came with holding it. So they let him through with no threat but a tough stare.

Lincoln walked through an elephant sized rotating door into the house and saw Aldrich sitting turned and hunched over an easel. He had stacks of little black notebooks on a wooden slab table beside him. His house was more of a museum and a warehouse than it was a home. The walls were pure-white concrete and most of the furniture was natural wood. His stature was nearly unbearable. Even hunched over the easel Aldrich was taller than everyone Lincoln saw on the block outside, a titan hiding in plain sight.

“Yes?” Aldrich asked softly unflinching from his work and not turning to address Lincoln. Even though he was speaking softly, his voice boomed throughout the house with an eerie echo.

“I was advised to bring something here,” Lincoln said as he presented the knife and the case.

Aldrich only turned his head to the side, as not to strain himself, “How do you know what that is?”

“It’s legend.”

Aldrich turned his head back and scoffed, “Legend.”

“The prophet of the…”

Aldrich cut Lincoln off, “You don’t want to finish that statement.”

Lincoln stood quiet and watched Aldrich continue for a moment. A few minutes passed and he addressed Lincoln again.

“I assume you came here to join The 3rd Street. Either that or you’re suicidal. You brought that as what? An offering?”

“I…I don’t know,” Lincoln responded nervously.

Aldrich laughed, “Then I don’t know if you’re going to leave here conscious.”

Lincoln began to panic and tried to save face while stumbling over his words. Aldrich found it entertaining, he was just messing with Lincoln;

“Nah you can join…if you go kill this man with his own knife. I want him to feel it, and I want you to think real hard about what you want when you come back here after you finished. Here’s an important lesson to take with you. I used to go with my moms to new houses before they sold them. She was a cleaner and she would make me help her instead of paying for day care. I hated it. Anyway, when we would finish a house she would say if we waited a little after we would get a chance to get the fresh baked cookies they brought for clients. So we would sit on the couch for a while, but I would never last more than six minutes, and I complained the entire time. Pick the right moment and be patient, even when you’re starving. I’ll let you keep the case too.”

Lincoln placed the case on the ground and opened it to find stacks of money. He was flustered and just as he was going to say something Aldrich said, “It’s 20,000. Go.”

Lincoln’s mind was made up entranced by the promise of profit and purpose, he was going to kill the prophet. He began his journey to the Zig Zag Boondocks, an area of the city that got it’s name from the way the streets were laid out, with one bus ride and the rest of the way on foot. Once there he was greeted with nothing but dry farmland, broken-down cars, and animals frozen in place due to the heat. One piece of land, however, looked like Eden. It was a lush and refreshing haven pleasant to all senses. Lincoln counted about thirty people working in the fields. Some were in the orange groves picking fruit, others were by the main house hanging towels, and so on. Lincoln knew this is where the prophet had to be, this land was something out of the Bible, but he didn’t know what the prophet looked like, so he didn’t know who he was looking for.

He walked closer to the house bewildered with the heaven surrounding him when a man from the orange groves came to greet him.

“Welcome. How can I help you?” The man looked normal to Lincoln, like his uncle or a friend’s dad. He spoke just as softly as Aldrich, the only difference was Lincoln felt his words soothe him rather than boom in his head.

“I came to return something that the prophet lost.”

The man laughed, “I’m not a prophet. That nickname floats around because I tell a lot of stories, but I think I know what you have for me. Lets go behind the barn so no one sees.”

Lincoln wasn’t sure if this was actually the prophet, the legends he heard made him seem much more grandiose. So he challenged him, “Can you tell me one of your stories?”

The man turned to Lincoln and smiled, “Of course. I’ll tell it as we walk.” The man led Lincoln to the back of the barn and spoke a parable;

“I saw an old recording of my granddad around Christmas. He was with his family, a bunch of old people I’ve never met, but they were in Virginia, or someplace like that, deep south type. Anyway, they were in the fields picking some fruit, or crop, for dinner. The thing about it was, to me, it looked like Hell, my head just went back to the one thing they teach us about in school, slavery, and I’m like who the fuck would want to go out there and relive that feeling? To them though, it was work. They owned the land, they were just out getting groceries. No matter what it looked like, or what history made of that type of work… they were happy out there working for themselves…there’s a lesson in that somewhere, but we gon do what we want at the end of the day.”

He pulled out a blunt from his pocket and lit it. Lincoln didn’t know whether or not that story meant anything, he wasn’t listening halfway through anyway. He wouldn’t acknowledge his nickname if this wasn’t him, Lincoln thought, would a prophet smoke?

They made it to the back of the barn and the man wiped his head with the sleeve of his shirt and looked at Lincoln waiting for him in a way like he knew what Lincoln was about to do. Lincoln pulled out the knife.

“Exactly what I thought you had…”

Lincoln stuck the knife in the man’s torso and he fell to the floor. Everything around Lincoln began to blur as he jolted and surveyed the area. He suddenly stopped when he saw another worker on the far side of the barn getting water from a faucet. The worker saw everything and Lincoln grew pale as he ran at him yelling. Lincoln bolted away from Eden-land in a cold sweat.

The worker stopped and knelt down by the man’s dying body. He pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. As it was ringing the man swiftly rose, removed the knife from inside himself, and stabbed the worker. He then grabbed the phone and explained to the cops that a young boy stabbed a worker and took off running in a frenzy. His voice changed in the exchange and when he hung up he snapped back into a state of calmness.

The man reached in his pocket and pulled out a little black notebook and wrote Lincoln’s name next to a tally and list of other names before his. He then transformed into the same squirrel that advised Lincoln before. He was neither the prophet nor the worker, but the shapeshifter Ames, whose name was also legend in the city, and known for being in debt to Aldrich. He grabbed the knife in his mouth and scurried off. Lincoln ran from the Zig Zag Boondocks in the hopes of making it back home before his decisions became his regrets.