Authors: Lee Pletzers
“
Tomas! Tomas! What the fuck’s goin’ on?” Tomas heard someone shouting from somewhere down the alley. Fuckin’ Sal. He never did know when to keep his mouth shut. Tomas leaned out from his hiding spot and motioned angrily to Sal to get out of there.
“
What?” Sal shouted back, “C’mon man, what’s goin’ on?”
Tomas shook his head at the words. Sal was a good guy when you needed someone to talk to besides the rats, and he did know how to make a mean rat burger, but Christ, was he stupid, and lately he had become even worse. Tomas would catch him muttering to himself or talking to shadows in the alley, and every now and then he’d see something strange in Sal’s eyes, like there was another person in there. He was a mess, but he was a good guy, and the streets were no place for a good man to call home.
“
Sal, quiet! It’s a roller!”
Sal dove behind a pile of trash and pulled a length of wet newspaper down over his head. He stared wide-eyed into the dark, fumbling to pull a small plastic baggie out of his shoe. Sal had never been a brave man, but like too many tortured souls in the ghetto, he found his courage at the bottom of a bottle, or in an unsuspecting bag of ‘treats’. Sal shoved the baggie over his nose and mouth and huffed as hard as he could. It was too fast. He fell back into a pile of old wooden pallets and rusty tools, scattering garbage everywhere as he choked uncontrollably. The racket he was making was bound to attract attention.
“
Sal! SAL!” Tomas yelled, “For fuck’s sake, shut the fuck up!”
Sal could hear the shadows again. He grinned an awkward smile and even managed a little chuckle. The voices would know what to do, they never let him down. The shadows demanded that he be still, and Sal would oblige. He shrank back into his corner and waited.
Tomas was quiet as a ghost, he dared not even move.
The approaching footsteps stopped at a steel loading dock just across from where Tomas was hiding. He could hear someone nearly out of breath, panting from their exertion. Fists and feet pounded against the steel door, trying to knock it off its hinges and break through. The ringing sound echoed down the alley. It was slow and rhythmic, and for a moment Tomas could almost hear Metallica’s
For Whom The Bell Tolls
rattling around his head. He was sure he was going crazy. All those months drinking from puddles and eating rat burgers had finally made him snap.
BANG! BANG!
Gunshots ripped through the metal bar that held the door shut, then someone kicked it open like the Terminator. Tomas was right. Cops. For all the time he found himself being kicked around by those pricks, Tomas had begun to amuse himself by giving each of them their own little pet names. Something to keep his mind off of the beatings and the humiliation that he had suffered at their hands. In the ghetto there was no law, no real law. The cops were just as corrupt as all the other miserable dregs down here, except that they had the guns, and the bums were an easy target for them to work through their ‘Daddy’ issues with. Tomas remembered this one. Short-cropped hair, thousand-yard stare and dumb as a fucking stump. He called this one Officer Friendly, one of Philly’s finest public servants.
Tomas bit back his tongue. He wanted nothing more than to tell good ‘ole Friendly exactly where and how he could stick himself, but something was wrong. Friendly’s eyes were wild and bloodshot, darting all over the place. Even though Tomas was surrounded by garbage he could just smell him standing there, like death itself had washed over him.
Officer Friendly could feel his whole body shaking. He looked around the alley like a mad dog, foaming at the mouth and mumbling incoherently. The shadows whispered ancient curses at him, swirling around him like some damnable fog. He flailed his arms to keep them back, but they just kept coming. Then he remembered. He had a gun.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Shots rang out through the alley at random, smashing into brick and pinging off the dumpster right next to Tomas’ head. Officer Friendly looked right at him. Crouched in the shadows, Friendly could see Tomas staring back at him with eyes that burned like cinders. Friendly tried to shake off the image but it only got stronger. He watched Tomas rise to his feet, his eyes smoldering in his head while the shadows enveloped him in a hellish cloak. Officer Friendly could feel the sulfur singe at his lungs. Tomas' hideous visage took a step forward and Friendly fired again.
In his hiding place, Tomas ducked to avoid the shot, even though it struck the wall behind him high enough that he would have to have been standing to be in any danger.
“
What the hell are you doing?!” Tomas yelled.
Officer Friendly shook his head. Tomas was getting closer, each step tainted with the stench of hell. The words he spoke were twisted and horrible, and as Tomas opened his mouth rancid earth crawling with worms fell from his lips. Friendly watched as Tomas’ face split apart and a cloud of darkness rolled out. It was as hell itself had come to usher Officer Friendly home, and it wasn’t about to go back empty handed.
Tomas sat there on the ground, dumbfounded by what he was seeing. Officer Friendly was waving his arms around furiously at something that wasn’t there. He was like a man possessed, screaming at the shadows and pissing himself.
“
No no no no,” Officer Friendly pleaded again and again, shaking his head. The voices in his mind were shrill and pitiless, and the darkness was swallowing him. He dropped his gun in desperation and began to weep like a beaten child.
Tomas reached out to him, leaving the safety of his hovel. He couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Officer Friendly reached back, and for a moment saw a friendly face amid the seething blackness all around him.
“
Take it,” Tomas pleaded to him, speaking as if the words were meant for his own son, if only he could see his face again. “Take my hand. It’s ok.”
He almost managed a smile.
CRACK!
Officer Friendly lurched forward, spitting a gout of blood over Tomas’ face. He fell to the ground in a sickening slump. A man stood above Officer Friendly’s body, wielding a rusty sledgehammer. It was Sal. His face was twisted into a menacing sneer, but it was his eyes that Tomas most felt he had seen before, it was the same look on Officer Friendly’s face only moments ago.
“
Please Sal, don’t.”
Sal looked down at Officer Friendly squirming on the ground like road kill that didn’t know well enough to just die. He watched as maggots crawled out of every pore on Friendly’s body in a writhing carpet of slime. Sal stared at the unfolding horror at his feet. He knew it was impossible but he couldn’t look away. The maggots hissed and spat at him, oozing onto the wet ground in search of their next meal. They were taunting him, daring him to act.
Tomas was too terrified to move. He swallowed back his urge to vomit.
“
Sal…”
Sal swung his hammer like he was breaking granite. The heavy weapon crashed into Officer Friendly’s back with a pulverizing thud, hammering down again and again and again. Sal swung to beat down the darkness, to drive out the horrors in his mind.
Fighting his will to scream, Tomas shut his eyes to the carnage. The sounds were a resounding cacophony of snapping bones and the wet slap of bloody flesh against the pavement. When the sounds mercifully ended, Tomas opened his eyes to see a mangled mess of what used to be Officer Friendly lying before him. Sal looked down at him, covered in blood, his chest heaving in exhaustion. Before his very eyes, Tomas was changing. Tentacles slithered from where his arms should have been; his eyes split open and some horrible black oil poured from the empty sockets. Terrible voices assaulted his mind. The darkness spoke to him, and he would oblige.
Sal raised his hammer.
Tomas had only seconds to act. He dove for Friendly’s gun, rolling out of the way. Sal spun around to see Tomas bearing down on him, holding a smoldering black cross in his hand. Sal could hear Tomas’ flesh sizzling.
“
Sal. Stop. It’s me.” Tomas’ body was swimming in adrenaline. He was shaking, his fingers fumbling with the blood-smeared gun in his hands. “It’s me.”
Sal heard only the guttural sounds of a madman. His eyes darted wildly. He swung.
BANG!
Tomas fired, striking Sal dead in the chest. Sal stumbled backward and dropped his hammer. It clanked against the pavement. He raised a hand, touching the smoking hole in his chest. He couldn’t feel anything. Sal looked back at Tomas, and for a moment he smiled.
“
Tha—” Sal started to say, then collapsed to the ground. Dead.
Tomas fell to his knees. Thunder growled in the sky, and the rain came down. He wept, pressing the gun against his temple. He stared in horror as the rain mingled with the bloody scene before him. In the morning the blood would be washed away, and the world would never know what happened here. Tomas couldn’t bear the thought of another day after this night.
He pulled the trigger.
CLICK
Empty.
It wasn’t going to be that easy. Tomas knelt there for a moment, eyes closed, praying for all this to be some terrible nightmare. He stared at Sal’s body, then down at his own hands. He had never killed anyone before. It was all so surreal. Sal was the first person Tomas had ever met down in the streets that hadn’t judged him. Sure, Sal had been living in the alleys for so long that his mind wasn’t what it used to be, but he welcomed Tomas into his trash-strewn abode without a second thought. Tomas had been at the lowest point of his life. Homeless, penniless, no family and nothing left to live for; but Sal never pitied him, only accepted him for what he was. A man down on his luck. And Tomas repaid that kindness with murder.
Now, Tomas truly had no one.
But this was not the time for a walk down memory lane. Tomas had to do something about the bodies. It wouldn’t be long before Officer Friendly was declared missing, and when his friends at the police station came looking for him, they wouldn’t be very subtle about it. Tomas stuffed the empty gun behind his back and walked over to Sal’s body. As he leaned down to pick him up he saw something he hadn’t noticed before in the dim light of the alleyway. Sal’s face and teeth were smeared with some sort of black dye. It would be hard for anyone to keep up with their hygiene when you lived in the streets, but this was truly filthy even by Sal’s standards.
“
I’m sorry buddy,” Tomas whispered, “you deserved better than this. No one should die in these streets.” Tomas looked back at the mangled remains of Officer Friendly. The rain was quietly sweeping the blood down a sewer drain a few feet away. Visions of his little boy’s funeral haunted Tomas’ thoughts. It was a rainy night just like this one when he last saw his son alive. Did Officer Friendly have any children? Tomas wondered, was he someone’s son? Suddenly Tomas felt terrible that he never learned what Friendly’s real name was. He shook his head solemnly. “Not like this. Not like this.”
Tomas knelt down and rolled Sal’s body over onto his stomach and started to go through his pockets. He wasn’t proud of looting his dead friend’s body, but living on the streets you do what you have to, to survive. He found a few loose coins and a torn dollar bill that had been taped together. Tomas couldn’t help but grin when he saw that bill. Sal always said that he kept that bill on him for good luck, that as long as he held onto it, he’d never truly be broke. ‘I always got this,’ he’d say, ‘might not have much else, but they’ll never take my last dollar.’ Poor Sal. He took that bill to his grave, but Tomas wouldn’t let that be the end. He’d hold onto it for his friend until his own time came. It was the least he could do.
Tomas picked up his friend and carried him to the dumpster. Christ, was he heavy. He couldn’t bear what he was about to do, but he had to stash the bodies somewhere, someone was bound to come looking. As Tomas laid his body down in the dumpster, one of Sal’s shoes fell off. There was a plastic bag peeking out of the heel. Tomas picked it up and shoved it in his front pocket, barely giving it a glance. If it was drugs, he didn’t have time for that now. He had to move quickly. He rummaged through the trash looking for something to wrap up Officer Friendly’s remains. He pulled out an old, ripped Phillies jersey and walked over to where Friendly lay. Even in the rain the smell nearly knocked him out. He laid the jersey on the ground beside the corpse and pushed the sickening mess onto it with his foot. Tomas wrapped up the wet remains like some deranged Christmas bundle and carried it over to the dumpster. Officer Friendly seemed a whole lot lighter with most of what was left of him sliding down the sewer drain. This was one night Tomas wished he could forget.
Standing there, the rain soaking him to his bones, Tomas gave one last look into his friend’s dead eyes and nodded a silent goodbye before closing the lid on the dumpster. The metal lid clanked shut like a tomb, the sound echoing down the alley. Tomas was sure that the earlier gunshots had chased off most of the vagrants by now, but before long the alley would be crawling with the city’s forgotten denizens one again, and he had to be long gone when they returned.