I died when I was 24. I was living in the city, working, being twenty-something. I had poker games with the guys and one night stands. I made enough money to party. I loved coke and crystal meth almost as much as I loved sex. I worked for a guy named Alex. Alex worked for another guy who worked for someone else. Somewhere in the mix, at the top, was a mob boss or something. I didn't care. I picked things up. I dropped things off. I made a lot of money. I snorted it, smoked it, fucked it away and my life was good.
I did the one thing you shouldn't do in the city. The one thing you shouldn't do when working for the "family". I pissed off someone important by accidentally telling them to go to hell and shooting them in the chest. Whoops.
I was hopped up that night. I remember it so vividly. I was dropping off a package to someone in the hills outside of town. At the time I had no idea who he was. I only knew that he was important to someone. He was well protected, well funded. He had a two-hundred-fifty dollar hair cut and a ten thousand dollar suit. No one knew his real name. Everyone called him Bobby.
When i got to the house, that night, I was escorted to a parlor. I had been instructed to deliver the package directly to Bobby. So I waited there, the heavy package in my lap, my eyes darting across the room in subtle paranoia. I could feel my high waning and longed to get up and grab my stash from the car. Instead, I ran the back of my hand across my nose, sniffing, trying to ease the urge.
When Bobby appeared he was all business. He took the package, handed me my package and I started to leave. He stopped me and asked if I wanted to see what I had brought him. I said no, it wasn't necessary but he wouldn't listen. He ripped open the padded protection and pulled the object from it's interior. It was silver plated. He showed me the engraving. The etching on the side burned itself into my memory. Adelaide.
I left. I drove straight home, doing lines in the car. When I got home, all I could do was lay there, the world around me still buzzing with intensity. Something about the entire evening felt wrong. The gun, the guy, the whole deal felt messy. I had done a lot of drop offs and nothing had ever felt so sketchy, drugs or not.
Next day, I called my connect. I asked about the job, knowing I wasn't going to get any answers. I was right, so I decided to find out myself. It felt wrong. I needed to know. I decided to head back to his house. The house in the middle of nowhere. I stopped, first, to pick up a daily dose of my favorite cocktail. My supplier worked a newspaper stand in the city. The swap was always the same, and easy after so many times. Today, though, it had to be different. Today I happened to see the paper. I saw the headline. I saw the name. I ran, without my cocktail, without my money. I ran because the words were there, behind my eyes.
Teenager Found In Local Motel
Adelaide Stevenson, daughter of local DA, was found yesterday, apparently murdered in the Lakeview motel...
I drove without seeing. The car could feel my urgency and flew down the road. When I arrived at the house, I buzzed at the gate and said I had a package for Bobby. They let me in. I walked into the parlor and he was sitting there waiting.
He stood up and leveled the gun at me. The silver plating was unmistakable. I tried to ask him why. The words wouldn't come. I realized i couldn't do anything. I didn't have a gun. I was high, angry and completely useless. I growled under my breath in frustration at having not thought this through. Bobby cocked his head to one side, looking like a curious dog. Then he lowered the gun and told me to leave. He turned to go and I lunged at him.
I managed to knock the gun from his hand before he had a chance to react. When he did react I realized what a mistake I had made. This man was not just rich and well protected. He was a killer. We rolled on the floor, he made contact over and over until i was only defending, my arms crossed in defense. When he had the opportunity, faster than i could see, he pulled a knife from the small of his back and jammed it into my chest.
He stood up, over my now immobile body, panting there on the floor. He started walking away. He yelled out to someone to go clean up the parlor. I had, in those few seconds, gotten my hands on the pistol, and gotten to my knees. Using the arm further from the knife blade still sticking out of my chest, I called out his name in a hoarse voice.
When he turned around I told him to go to hell, and shot him in the chest.
His boys came running. Some attended to Bobby. Others came to me. They picked me up, leaving the knife in my chest. I could feel myself fading as the carried me. Bobby told them to dump me. I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in a trunk. The road bounced beneath me. I tried to move my arm to pull the knife, still in my chest, out. My hands were tied. I tried to scream. I was gagged. All I could do was stare into the blackness, praying to a god I didn't believe in anyway. Until the finally opened the trunk and threw me off the bridge. I passed out before I hit the water.
I died. Not too many people can say that in the past tense. I say it all the time. The last thought I had before hitting the water and sinking to my death was of Adelaide, a girl I never knew. When I woke up I was washed up on the shore below the bridge, still tied, knife still sticking out of my chest.
I was breathing. I managed to get my hands undone, tearing the skin of my wrists in the process. Once my struggle got me free, I lay there on my back, looking up at the few stars visible through the smog. It dawned on me that I should be dead. I reached over and grabbed the hilt of the knife in my chest and pulled it out. It slid out with a soft sucking sound. It didn't hurt. I lay there, in shock, and could feel the tissue knitting itself back together. What the hell was going on? I still don't know. It's been a year. The knife left a scar. Every wound, except that one, heals perfectly.
I can't die. I don't know why yet. I haven't bothered to figure it out. After that night, I left the city and traveled on foot for months. I couldn't wrap my head around it. All I knew was I couldn't die. After a year of trying to find answers and coming up with nothing. After a year of wandering, searching for something, I returned to the beginning.
I took a cab to the front gate of Bobby's place. I buzzed. I told them I had a package for Bobby. They let me in. He saw me and his eyes almost cracked from the strain of his face. He laughed and said he was impressed that we'd both survived. He told me how foolish it was to have come back. Then he sent the boys after me.
This time he shot me in the head. No mistakes, I can imagine he was thinking. Then they drove me to a junkyard outside the city and threw me out like the garbage. When I woke up, or whatever it is, I made my way back to the hotel i had been in. I changed and called a taxi.
Finally, we have arrived. I get out and pay the man. I walk up to the front gate with the gun in my hand. I buzz at the gate. When the voice comes from inside I look into the camera...
Tell Bobby I have a package for him.
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