Sunday, August 21, 2005
Fast Fiction Friday Four
"Hey, this isn't Friday," the uninformed are saying to themselves. Allow me to inform you. Every Friday blogger legend JJ sponsors Fast Fiction Friday, in which he supplies the first line and bloggers the world over supply the body of the story. We have until Monday noon to finish. The first line this week was The day was hot, but there was ice... Read more about it by clicking "JJ" under my VIP list. Yes, I added more VIP. It was long overdue, but I'm a lazy fuck. Like most VIP lists in Vegas, the new additions are mostly hot chicks, and I guess Egan and JJ bribed the door.

Vegas Confidential

The day was hot, but there was ice where my soul should have been. Damn thing froze over a year into the job, and this was year fifteen. It'll never thaw now, not until I'm burning in hell, anyway. Fifteen years as a detective, fifteen years pounding the streets of Las Vegas looking for pimps, drug dealers, arsonists, murderers; it made me bitter, it made me violent, it made me incapable of any human emotion except disgust. If they're lucky, no tourist will ever see the Vegas I saw. Every day on the job was a knife in my back, a punch to my face, a knee in my groin.

My last case introduced me to Selia, a stripper - hard luck story but ain't they all - a junkie, didn't stand on a street corner but wasn't allergic to turning tricks. Selia had the kind of body that made men stupid, and since I was already stupid it turned me retarded. She was looking for some random dirtbags who killed her brother. I took the case even though whoever offed the fucker did this town a favor. Kenny was a thieving, raping sack of ass foam, and sometimes he really got ugly. He killed more people than cigarettes, and I was supposed to care that he finally got his? I said no at first, but Selia used her mouth, her hips, her tits to bring me around to her way of thinking. Selia could have talked Spielberg into directing kiddie porn, so effective were her powers of persuasion.

I got a name from a guy I smacked into hamburger meat, so I rode out to the suburbs to Summerlin, one of those cookie-cutter communities that gave me the creeps. I wasn't used to dealing with the upper-middle class. I always knew what a filthy scumbag was thinking, what he'd do next. The yuppies, I had no clue. Their world seemed odd to me: A Starbucks on every corner. Even some of my friends liked the place. "Good coffee," they'd say. Well, I never liked good coffee. I liked my coffee burnt and stale and so hot it blistered my tongue. I needed it to be thick like tar and taste like ashes, served up from a pot stained from years of use and never properly cleaned. To me, drinking gourmet coffee would have been like fucking a man in his ass; fine for others but not me.

The guy I was looking for lived in a guard-gated community, so showing up unannounced proved troublesome. I had to punch the guard at the front gate in his chubby face about a million times before the recently toothless bastard let me in. He probably tried to call for help after I drove away, but it's hard to understand someone with a mouthful of blood. Or maybe he lost consciousness. Either way, the police didn't show up.

When I got to the house of the man in question I decided it was no time to play it quiet. I walked up the long driveway, almost tripped over a step, and kicked the fucking door in. The moment I was inside I could feel the bullet ripping through my flesh. On the way to the floor is when I heard the shot.

God damn it! I had spent my adult life in the worst neighborhoods in Las Vegas, interacting with the god-awfulest people on earth. While undercover I'd sleep in dumpsters, in bus stations, on public benches soaked with someone else's piss.; and now I was going to die in a five bedroom, 4,500 sq. foot custom-built home at the hands of a golf enthusiast or whatever. It just didn't seem right.

I heard the footsteps of the person who shot me as he walked over to finish the job. This was no professional or I would have already had another four bullets in me. I could still see enough to look up at my assailant and discover it wasn't a "he", it was Selia. This was a set-up the whole time. I was sure the house belonged to some smart guy who Selia fucked stupid, but that didn't really matter. She was about to kill me.

"You could have saved my brother," she said, aiming the gun at my head. "You knew they were going to kill him."

I didn't know, but arguing seemed pointless at the time. Now, Selia was good at manipulating men, the best. But she couldn't kill a guy for shit. When you're dealing with a dangerous son of a bitch like me - I once bit a guy's nose off and ate it in front of him - you have to kill me dead and be quick about it. The first shot should have been to my head, and the second shot and third shot and fourth shot if necessary should have happened before I knew what was going on.

But Selia, fucking amateur, shot me near the chest but missed my heart, took her sweet-ass time walking over, and then felt the need to explain her motives. She should have just killed me.

Getting too close was her last mistake. I swung my legs at her feet, knocking her down hard to the marble floor. As she fell she fired the gun but missed me, and the impact when she hit forced it from her hand. I struggled to my feet and picked up the weapon.

For a minute I didn't want to kill her, she had such a beautiful face. But as I stood there with blood leaving my body like tourists flocking back to Cali on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to solve all of my problems and shoot that beautiful face right off her head.

The moment I killed her I lost consciousness. I woke up in the hospital a few days later, under arrest for Selia's murder; the story being I broke in and she shot me while trying to defend herself. At my trial, the yuppie house owner testified against me, saying Selia was the love of his life and he hated me for taking her from him.

Damn, Selia couldn't kill a guy, but she sure could fuck with his head.


6 Comments:

Blogger Scarlet Hip said...

Very Mickey Spillane! I like it. But I am concerned that you always seem to wind up in jail at the end of your stories.

Blogger Unknown said...

I'm thinking more Earl Stanley Gardner. Very impressive. Your presence in the game is now mandatory - even if I did have to bribe my way past the velvet rope.

Blogger Spinning Girl said...

Wowie.

Blogger Cincysundevil said...

Good stuff; you should really consider writing for a living.

Blogger Maddie said...

I'm with Brooke, there's a definite prison theme...

Ps. Thanks for letting me into the VIP club without a cash bribe!

Blogger JimMiller said...

This one's my favorite so far. Thanks for a fun read.

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