My eyes snap
open with the sound of the alarm tone blaring from my phone. I roll over and
shut it off. 11:30. It’s time. I grin as I roll myself off of
the broken bed and pop my bones. I feel much more rested now after my nap. I do
a few quick exercises to get my blood going again. Jumping jacks, sit ups,
pushups, jogging in place. That’s more like it. I can feel a sheen of sweat on
my face as I jump up and down. The blood is rushing through my body, my heart pounding.
I make sure my muscles are loose and relaxed.
I dress
quickly and step into my bathroom, flicking the light switch. The fluorescent
monster roars and stabs into my eyeballs, dazzling me as it often does. I take
a bottle of amphetamine capsules and a bottle of propranolol from the cabinet and down two of each with a gulp of
water from the faucet. They will keep me alert, and hopefully not too twitchy.
Twitchy is the absolute last thing I need to be on a night like this. On a job
like this I need absolute focus. I walk out of my bathroom and into bedroom again, staring outside through the filthy venetians. I put my phone, keys, wallet, and Zippo back into my pockets. The slightly squashed pack of cigarettes goes into my jacket. I roll my shoulders one last time and look outside again. The city never really
sleeps, but the people in Antonio’s neighborhood, the normal ones anyway, will
be indoors and feeling safe behind their barred windows and triple dead-bolted
doors.
Let’s do
this.
I walk into the living room and out into the hallway, locking my door behind me and walking briskly down the hallway to the stairwell. There are
many good things about amphetamines, but an unfortunate side effect is an
increased sense of smell. Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe it’s true, but this
hallway really smells like thrice cooked cabbage and terrible sulfur farts.
Eugh. I trip on the last stair and almost smack my head into the doorframe at
street level. God damn this fucking building.
As I walk
down the block to the parking deck, I can start to feel the amphetamines
coursing into my system and caressing my central nervous system with its lovely
tendrils. I love the feeling of an amphetamine high. Makes me feel fucking
fantastic. I’m sure a few of you can relate, right? Of course you can. A
blacked out police SUV rolls by and stops at the streetlight. I can’t see
inside it, but I’m sure the thugs inside are watching me closely. I stop outside the parking deck and pull out a smoke, lighting it and flicking my Zippo closed. Exhaling
a cloud of blue smoke, I shudder. Nicotine and amphetamine make for a nice
combo. The light changes and the police SUV peels out from its dead stop,
roaring down the street at 80 MPH in a matter of seconds.
I suck down
half of the cigarette by the time I reach the second level of the parking deck. The teenager
from earlier in the day isn’t there anymore, instead a heavyset black woman is
inside the booth, reading a magazine by the looks of it. Dead end duty. I’d be
bored stupid if I had to work that job. I take another hard drag of my
cigarette and flick the rest onto the pavement as I come to my truck, parked
just as I left it earlier. I hop in and turn the key, hearing the angry, throaty
roar of the Hemi engine. I check the box behind my seat to make sure the
grenades are still under the jacket where I left them. They are, thankfully.
I pull slowly
out of the parking garage and into the street, driving carefully just under the
speed limit. Antonio lives in the West Ward, known colloquially as the West
Side, off South Orange Avenue. The projects. The marsh there stinks almost as
bad as the stairwell in my fucking apartment. It only takes me a few minutes to get into the area. I park behind a closed down
liquor store on the corner to hide my truck, and jump out, stuffing the
grenades in my pockets. The liquor store is about 2 or 3 blocks from his house, roughly. I make sure to lock the doors of my truck, but that won’t
stop some hood with a tire iron if he really wants into it. Most of the
streetlights here have been broken or just burned out. Public
Works doesn’t like to come down here, and I don’t blame them. But I’m about to
perform a little neighborhood maintenance of my own.
I make my way
through the alley a few blocks up the street, about 7 houses from Antonios. The entire street is a collection of crack dens and gang
hideouts. The burned out hulks of brownstones dot the streets every few houses.
There’s the stereotypical burning barrel surrounded by drunks or strung out
addicts on the corner of South Orange and S. 19th Avenue. I make my
way past on the sidewalk, nodding to them. They pay me hardly more than a
glance. I seem to have that effect on people. Or maybe they’re just hurting for
a rock or a stamp, who knows. Antonios hangout is about 3 houses down from a
BBQ joint on the corner. I can hear loud rock music and voices inside as I walk
past the few people outside dragging on their cigarettes. They’ll draw a crowd
when I make a move.
There it is.
A stubby, filthy two story house in desperate need of a new coat of paint and a
mown lawn, surrounded by overgrown bushes. I can smell the acrid, sickly sweet
smell of crack even out here on the sidewalk. I creep into the yard slowly,
keeping low so as not to be seen. Surprisingly, there’s no one sitting in the
collection of chairs on the front porch, but I can see the lights on inside and can hear the heavy bass thump of trap music rattling the windows. I raise my
head slowly and peer into the bottom of the front room window. Antonio and a
few other people are sitting on a filthy brown couch each taking hits from a
crack pipe, laughing and simultaneously drinking from the collection of liquor bottles on the
coffee table. There’s a massive black guy with his back to the window in front
of the stereo, on the other side of the room, doing some kind of dance move
with an absolutely disgusting looking woman on his side. I grimace, imagining
the stink of them all.
Time to cleanse this fucker.
I pull the White Phosphorous grenade from my pocket and slowly take the pin out, slipping it
into my pocket. Best not to leave that evidence. I hold the spoon of the
grenade to the side of it, and take a step back, winding up in a classic
baseball stance and whipping the grenade directly through the plate glass
window. It lands on the coffee table, but that’s the last thing I see before I
run out of the yard onto the street. With a WHUMP noise and a loud whooshing, I can hear, feel, and see the room light up and fill with sparks and
white smoke. I can hear them all screaming as the sparks rain down on them and
melt through the skin. White phosphorous burns through just about anything and doesn’t
stop until it’s deprived of oxygen. The smoke they’re inhaling is horribly
toxic, scarring and burning through their respiratory systems. They’re literally
burning inside and out. I grin as I pull the other grenade form my pocket,
pulling the pin and throwing with all my strength. The grenade smashes through
a second story window, presumably a bedroom, and goes off with another WHUMP
sound followed by a loud whoosh and a flash of orange light. Within seconds I
can see the living room is aflame and the thermite grenade has set the entire upstairs bedroom aflame. The combined effects of them both will have the house consumed
by fire in minutes, and there won’t be anything left by the time the fire
department responds. If they respond.
With a grin,
I run back into the alleyway and slide into the shadows, watching the grenades
do their work. The only thing that emerges from the house is a large plume of thick
grey smoke. And the only thought in my mind, is...
We don’t need no water, let the
motherfucker burn…
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