I apologize for not posting in a while. (If you follow me on social media then you already know that I've had my hands full lately.) I am working on some new pieces to post here for you guys. Some of the posts are short stories that I wrote specifically for the blog and others are meant to give you an update on what's going on in my life. Stay tuned. For today though, I'd like to share a chapter from one of my bestsellers, "Death in the City." Enjoy...and subscribe to my Patreon Page. I've been posting chapters from all of my current works in progress over there.
1 -
Crumbling Tombstones
|
T
|
he nightclub resembled a graveyard that early in
the day compared to how alive it would be when it was filled with decadent
people partying later on that night. Enoch, the owner, stood alone in his
office on the second level of the swanky establishment and grimly stared down
at the empty dance floor as the house DJ’s crew tweaked the sound system. As
the boss stared down at his kingdom through the tinted window, he sipped warm,
vintage, red wine straight from the bottle and savored the bitter sweetness of
it. He had been saving it for a special occasion but with all of the strange
things that had taken place as of late, coupled with the murders of two men
that were the closest things to friends that he had, he thought it was a great
time to celebrate the fact that he was still on his feet and not buried under a
tombstone six feet deep.
Enoch had a good idea how things had gone sour at
the body shop which ultimately ended with Manuel catching a bullet to the face.
Enoch had warned the man many times about greed. There was no need for a
shepherd to fuck the sheep that he sheered and if you don’t find a way to keep
the wolves around your borders at bay, they eventually do what wolves do. Enoch
didn’t need all the details to know what had probably caused that bloodbath.
Manuel’s habit of robbing his own customers from time to time must have come
back to bite him. That was something Enoch knew would eventually happen.
However, Sammie Slim’s murder disturbed him. The fact that his burnt body had
been found inside the smoking ruins of Manuel’s place of business wasn’t a
coincidence. Both incidents weren’t the result of any prior conflict as far as
Enoch could tell. He had ears to every wall on every street so he was aware of
almost every beef in the city, big little or small. Even though Enoch couldn’t
figure out who may have done the fat man in, he felt the crows circling above
his own head. That made him think of a man that he hadn’t heard from in a few
days. As he took another sip of wine from the bottle, someone knocked on his
office door and derailed his train of thought.
“Come in!” Enoch barked.
“Hey Boss, I have a gift for you,” said Molly, one
of the bottle service girls that worked at the club, as she entered the room.
“I figured that these might cheer you up a little bit. I heard about Sammie,”
she said as she handed Enoch a little wooden box.
“Thanks Molly,” said Enoch as he opened the box of
hand-rolled Cuban cigars.
“You’re welcome Boss,” she answered and blushed
when she noticed the way he looked at her. “I know he was your friend.”
“I don’t have friends,” Enoch corrected her.
“Still, it’s fucked up…the way he died.”
Enoch was so numb to seeing the girls that worked
in the club for him dressed in skimpy outfits that it actually turned him on to
see Molly dressed in tight jeans and a regular blouse. He carefully removed a
single cigar from the little wooden box. He smelled it and admired it before he
set the box with the rest of the cigars down on the red sofa next to where he
and Molly stood. He never took his eyes off of her as he bit the tip off of the
Cuban and spat the end of it on the floor.
“Need a light?” She asked and then handed him a
pack of wooden matches that she had stashed in her designer clutch.
“I always wonder why you girls spend your tips on
shit like that,” said Enoch, pointing to her little purse as she let his cigar.
“A girl’s gotta have at least a few nice things
when she works hard,” she giggled.
“I suppose,” he said as he brushed his fingers
gently against her cheek and tucked a few loose strands of her hair behind her
ear. She had dyed it a dark shade of red, almost the same color as the
expensive wine he had been drinking all day and Enoch liked it. “Everybody
likes nice things,” he said as his eyes worked down to her deep cleavage.
The bright-red, broken heart that was tattooed in
between Molly’s breasts were a bigger tease and more attractive to Enoch than
her ample chest. It took serious commitment, completely reckless impulsiveness
and very deep pain to prompt her to make such a bold statement on a part of her
body where most women wouldn’t have marked themselves. He wasn’t sure if it was
because of the wine or maybe the feeling of impending doom that loomed over his
head but Enoch knew what he was in the mood for. He figured that Molly did too
when she started to unfasten his belt. He unbuttoned her blouse all the way and
pulled down her bra to expose her D-cup breasts before she got down on her
knees in front of him.
Enoch had always kept his hands off of the girls
that worked for him. He believed that if he made any one of them feel as if he
sexually desired them, he would lose too much of his authority. Most of them
were used to men always pawing at them and if they got a sense that their boss
wanted to sleep with them, they would view him as the same as every other man
they had ever played. However, the way he was feeling that day, there was no
way he wasn’t going to make good use of Molly’s hot, wet and willing mouth. She
kissed the tip of his privates and flirtatiously batted her eyelashes when she
looked up at him. It was sweet and she was very cute but Enoch wasn’t in the
mood for sweet. He grabbed the back of her head, forced her to take him deeper
than she expected and nearly made her choke. Then, when Molly realized what he
liked, she didn’t back down or shy away. While she was down on her knees she
aimed to please and she showed him just how deep her throat was.
Enoch smoked the cigar while Molly went down on him
like a porn star. His office door was still wide open but neither one of them
cared if someone walked in and caught them. As good as she was at what she was
doing, Enoch held on for much longer than even he expected. He even felt sorry
for Molly for a moment and wondered how much more her jaw could take but she
didn’t seem like she needed a break. When he felt his orgasm coming, he grabbed
her hair, pulled her head back and let everything go, all over her face and the
tattoo he admired so much. Molly smiled, smacked her lips and did her best to
lick up everything that dripped. Her mascara had run and streaked down her
cheeks but there was no sadness in her eyes. There was only a longing gaze as
she waited for some look of approval from Enoch that never came.
“Go clean yourself up,” Enoch told her as he pulled
his pants up.
“Okay,” Molly answered as she looked around for
napkins.
“You can use my restroom,” he told her and pointed
to the restroom door. “When you’re done, I’ve got a couple hundred in my desk
drawer. Take it,” he offered.
“You don’t have to,” she started to say.
“Just take it,” he cut her off. Enoch didn’t want
her to assume that what had just happened between them was personal or that it
would lead to anything else. For him, it was what it was and that was all it
was going to be.
“You sure that’s all you wanted? You know, we could
do more. You have a nice dick,” she flirted. Going down on him had left her
wet. She didn’t mind living out her kinky boss and secretary fantasy.
She also knew that none of the other girls at the club had been with him which
made it even sexier.
“Not now…but thanks,” he politely rejected her
offer.
While Molly freshened up in the restroom, Enoch
slumped down on the red couch with his wine and his cigar. When curvy Molly
reemerged from the bathroom, he pointed to his desk to remind her to take the
money, which she did and then strolled out of his office. Enoch was happy that
she closed the door behind her so he could be alone with his own thoughts
again.
A thick cloud of smoke swirled above Enoch’s head
as he thought about all of the death that seemed to be lingering all around him
with a taste of cigar and the wine on his lips. He thought about the girl he
had allowed to be tortured and murdered downstairs in the gambling room at the
back of the club.
“Stephanie didn’t deserve that,” he slurred and
murmured to himself.
Because of him and his schemes, a lot of people had
been sent to the reaper but, he wished that she hadn’t died the way she did
even though he couldn’t have let her get away with pulling a gun on him. She
had just been a sweet girl that fatally got caught up in someone else’s drama.
It was true that Sammie Slim had done the deed but it was Alicia that damned
that poor single mom to an ugly death because she got mixed up with her. As
soon as Alicia crossed his mind, Enoch thought about Mr. Crowe and what both he
and Sammie Slim had paid the man to do. For days, Crowe hadn’t answered any of
Enoch’s calls and that gave Enoch a good reason to suspect that some sinister
deal might have been struck between the contract killer and the woman he was
supposed to kill. He wondered what currency Alicia might have used to save her
own skin. Crowe had never failed to fulfill a contract before so Enoch wondered
what could have possibly persuaded a man that had always been cold-blooded and
professional to suddenly forget what he was about. Then, and even more
troubling thought entered Enoch’s head. He wondered if Alicia had somehow
managed to turn the tables on Crowe. That was and even scarier scenario to
consider because if she had killed Crowe, it would mean that Alicia was way
more dangerous than Enoch could have imagined. Underestimating her was what
might have gotten Sammie Slim butchered and burned. Just in case that was true,
he didn’t intend to make the same mistake.
Enoch half-stumbled, half-staggered over to his
desk and unlocked the drawer where he kept the prepaid burner phone he used to
keep in contact with Crowe. He dialed the only number he had stored in the
cheap flip phone but once again, it rang over and over again but no one answered.
He snapped the flip shut and flung the phone back into the drawer. Even drunk,
he could feel something very bad riding towards him and whatever it was, he
planned to be ready for it. He had no intentions of being someone’s prey, as it
seemed Sammie Slim had been. He pressed the panic button under his desk and a
panel in the wall behind him slid open to reveal a room that only he knew about.
Enoch spun around in his leather swivel chair and
peered into the eerie blue light that illuminated the secret room where he kept
a deadly arsenal of assorted firearms. On the shelves and on the walls he had
everything, from revolvers, to automatic handguns, to high-powered assault
rifles. Whatever, or whoever was coming for him would find him ready and
well-prepared. His life was not going to be easy to take.
“What are we doing here?” Alicia asked as Crowe
drove right up to the rusty metal gate of an old, private cemetery.
Crowe didn’t answer but before long, an elderly man
with a grizzled grey beard that extended well beyond his chin, hobbled up with
a huge ring of keys. With uncanny familiarity, he put his wrinkled finger on
the one that would open the gate and then unlocked it. For a moment, Alicia
felt bad for the old man as he struggled mightily to part the heavy, iron gate.
Crowe didn’t blink or make a move to get out to help him. Once the opening was
wide enough for the car to pass through, Crowe drove inside and the old man
locked the gate behind them.
Underneath the thin layer of untouched virgin snow,
there was the faint hint of a paved trail. Crowe navigated his way through the
twists and curves with the familiarity of a man who had driven down that
winding hidden road many times before. Alicia looked out of the passenger
window and stared at the rows of weathered tombstones. She had never been in a
place where the air felt so still. The only things that moved were the
blackbirds that were perched on some of the headstones or the ones that darted
across the winter sky on jet black wings. She remembered that her mother had
told her that crows where the guardians of the dead souls that remained here
stubbornly after they should’ve moved on to the other side.
“We’re here,” said Crowe as he gently applied the
brakes and stopped the car.
“Here? Where is here exactly?” Alicia asked,
still confused and in the dark about what they were doing an old cemetery in
the middle of the day.
“Let’s go,” he said and got out of the car without
answering her question.
Alicia reluctantly stepped out of the car into the
cold winter air and immediately missed the heated seat that had been keeping
her butt warm. Once she was outside the car, she regretted not wearing jeans
instead of the short black skirt she had on as Jack Frost put his cold lips to
both of her ass cheeks. She quickly zipped up her short, bomber jacket before
he also froze her tits.
“What the fuck?” she said as Crowe appeared from
the back of the car with a shovel he had just retrieved from the trunk.
“Come with me,” he said as he handed her a large,
empty black duffel bag.
“It’s cold out here and I’m not really dressed for
this…whatever this is,” Alicia complained as she pulled the fur-lined
hood of her jacket up over her head.
“I told you to wear jeans but you wanted to show
off your thighs,” he reminded her as she walked behind him.
“Why not? My thighs a magical,” she mumbled.
Crowe and Alicia walked through the cemetery and
its rows of graves that no one visited anymore. The tombstones defiantly poked
out above the snow as they displayed the names of the people buried there, even
if no one would ever place flowers in front of them again for the dead people
who were laid to rest beneath them. Alicia’s eyes watered in the cold and as
she walked behind Crowe, she felt as if they were trespassing in the home of
hundreds of lost souls. An eerie feeling started to become stronger and
stronger until it made her skin tingle. She had never believed in ghosts or any
kind of strange, unexplained, otherworldly things but nothing could’ve
convinced her that THAT place wasn’t haunted. There was absolutely no breeze
but she thought she felt the wind whip across her face and heard whispers.
“Here we are,” said Crowe as he slammed the blade
of the shovel into the ground in front of one of the graves.
“What…the…fuck?” Alicia whispered when she saw the
name etched deeply in the tombstone.
It read: Patrick Crowe.
“Don’t worry. I’m not a zombie or some dead man who
has come back to life,” he laughed as he started digging.
“Why is your name on that headstone? Did you?”
Alicia started to ask.
“No, I didn’t steal someone else’s identity either.
I am who I say I am,” Crowe reassured her.
“Well, that’s just fuckin’ creepy. Who does that?
Who has their own headstone made and placed on the grave before they’re even
dead?” she asked.
“People who won’t have anyone to bury them, or
mourn them after they’re gone,” Crowe answered as he continued to shovel up
piles of earth.
“I would mourn you,” said Alicia.
“That’s sweet,” he answered but sounded skeptical.
“Why are you digging up your own grave now? You
plan on dying in the next hour or so?” Alicia asked.
“You’ll see,” he answered, a little out of breath
from the effort it was taking to dig up the frozen soil.
Twenty minutes later, Crowe’s shovel hit something
and made a hollow sound. Alicia assumed that it must have hit the lid a coffin
but after ten more minutes of his digging, she found out that it was a wooden,
coffin-sized crate buried in the shallow grave. Crowe used the shovel awkwardly
to pry the lid open and Alicia was completely surprised by what she saw inside
it. Along with bundles of money that were stacked neatly and wrapped in
plastic, there was an assortment of deadly firearms as well.
“Give me the bag,” Crowe told her.
Without hesitation, Alicia quickly handed him the
large black duffel bag she had been carrying and looked around nervously as if
she was worried that someone might discover them.
“Aren’t you afraid that somebody’ll rob you?” she
asked as he began to stash cash in the bag.
“No one else knows about this except for me…and
now…YOU do too so, you’d have to be the robber I suppose,” he answered.
“But the old man at the gate,” Alicia reminded him.
“The groundskeeper? Don’t worry, he’s blind,” Crowe
answered. “And besides… I own this place and no one visits these poor souls
anymore. I’m the only one that comes here.”
“You own a cemetery?” she asked, somewhat
surprised.
“I told you…me and Death have a special
relationship,” he answered and Alicia couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or
being serious.
“What are those for?” she asked as he also stashed
a few guns in the bag along with the cash.
“You’re not done. You’re not going to stop with
Sammie Slim,” Crowe answered. “You haven’t mentioned him but I know that
Enoch’s been on your mind too, and I know what you want to do. Right now, after
the fire, he’s off-balance and confused…trying to figure out what’s going on.
He’s been calling my phone nonstop but I haven’t answered. If you want to get
him…now’s the time. You won’t get another chance. Are you sure you want to do
this?” he asked Alicia one final time.
“Enoch paid you to kill me. He let Steph get
tortured and then shot her. He doesn’t get to live either,” she said with grim
determination and concrete resolve.
Crowe reached up and handed Alicia the duffel bag
but he purposely left it open, curious to see what she would do next. He
watched as she briefly stared at the contents of the bag; enough cash for her
to disappear and live comfortably somewhere quiet along with loaded guns, any
of which she could easily use to kill him, right then and there. Crowe waited
tentatively for her next move with the words of the prophetic palm reader heavy
on his heart. He was in the perfect spot if the sands of time in the hourglass
of his life have finally run out. He had already done her the favor of digging
his own grave if she decided to betray him.
“You know…when I killed that pig Sammie, it didn’t
make me feel much better about what happened to Steph so I doubt that killing
Enoch will make me forget everything he took from me but…it’ll be a good
fucking start,” said Alicia as she stretched down her hand to help Crowe out of
the grave.
Copyright
© 2016 Keith Kareem Williams
All
rights reserved.
Click HERE if you'd like an autographed copy of "Death in the City."
Or, if you prefer eBooks, you can download a copy HERE.
