Stolen Me by K. Michael Washington (read with me .TXT) 📕

by myself, the way I really like it. The way I’ve grown to like it. The way I see it has to be. I’m driving the back roads of southern Illinois smoking a joint and remembering everything, every sign, every house, every turn, and every bump in the road. I’ve done it four different ways twenty seven times each. The longest took an hour and the shortest took just under that. The problem I ran into was that in this day and age, there is no way to evade the police for an hour. If you ditch a cop, you have to get off the road. And I had to keep moving to make the boat. You couldn’t hide a car like this anyway. Big Nicky had an overseas buyer for a Benz Mclaren, and virtually any other collectable car. But at fifty percent of retail, a Mclaren was a steal. After learning my getaway route I started to plan the details of obtaining the car. Nothing I came up with solved the problem of the cops casting a net. There would be too many cops between A and B. I needed a smoke screen.

I went back to Nicky’s car wash and told him to put the word out that there was a job that paid seventy-five thousand dollars with a twenty-five thousand dollar buy in. Triple your money. Wall Street didn’t have shit on this. Before I knew it, I had all of the drivers I needed to make my smoke screen. Nicky even volunteered to participate. I didn’t want to see the kid go to jail, but he insisted. Even after I told him that I expected everyone to get caught but me. He kept saying he would make it.

Not wanting Big Nicky to put a bullet in me for getting his son locked up, I took it to him. Nicky promised that he wouldn’t get caught. I wished it were my own son telling me he wanted in at any cost! The amount of balls it took to go out on a limb plus pay your own way bought my approval and his father’s. He was in. In his defense, the kid had raced on a local amateur circuit and won. Since then, he stayed in his father’s good graces by running the car wash and winning money street racing. When Big Nicky bought his son a supped up T.A., it wasn’t a gift, it was an investment. I realized I would’ve thought of my son in the same way that Big Nicky did his. When I ask myself if a man who wishes his evils on his son is a man at all, my answer is unwavering. Not only are we men, but we are man’s envy, a taste of what we were, something satisfying and primitive. Once you live this life, you realize that. Most men want their sons to be better men. We want ours to be bigger.

SON

I packed the little bit of shit I had in a suite case while she slept. It made me realize that I never really moved in. Everything had become temporary for me since I left home. When she wakes up, maybe she’ll think I was a dream. I sat outside of our apartment in my truck. No. I sat out side of Amber’s apartment in Marcus Cutler’s truck. I was Dillinger Braddock. Son of Freeman Braddock. I didn’t know how he would take the news but I was done being someone that I wasn’t. I was done doing anything that I didn’t want to do.

When I pulled into Nicky’s carwash I saw a couple older men in a Cadillac pulling out. I assumed it was Nicky’s father and smiled about my timing. When I walked into Nicky’s office I saw that he hadn’t had an epiphany to detour his celebration of a job well done. He was busting some coke down. Not wanting to be rude, I hit a line with him. Then Nicky says “One is too many and a thousand ain’t enough.” This was universal for help yourself. His coke was top notch. So I hit one more line. Then I hit him with it.

“Nicky, name isn’t Marcus Cutler.”

“Oh shit! You rat-pig muthafucka!” Boom!

My ears are ringing and all I smell is smoke. I had that same feeling again. Like when you get in a car wreck. You’re just there. And there I was, sitting in the same chair, but now in the corner of Nicky’s office. I look down and my shirt’s on fire. Having trouble moving, I swat and slap at it best I could with my hands and put it out. First I noticed the hole in the desk, then the one through my left side. Wood debris littered my wound. I look up and Nicky’s coming from behind the desk with a shotgun. A big black one, like the kind the cops carry when they kick in a meth dealers door. At the same time he pumps the shotgun loading my death into the chamber, my hearing comes back, and reality comes with it. I try to scream but only blood comes up. Nicky notices that I was trying to talk and doesn’t shoot right away. When my words finally beat the blood, my conversation is weak and with the barrel of his shotgun. “I’m Dillinger Braddock. I’m his son!” I said proudly, thrusting my father’s name forth as if it were bullet proof.

I was sure it meant something to him. I saw his body kind of slump as he raised the shotgun from my mouth to my head. His eyes hadn’t sobered, and I could hear the speed in his breathing. He tried to clear his numb throat before he decided. But he did decide. “Doesn’t matter who you are now, it’s too late! For the record, I’m sorry, you dead already!”

FATHER

“Big Nicky understood my pain. He loved his son dearly and had sympathy for me, plus I had just made him a lot of money so I had gained favor. After “reaching out” as he called it, he had a California address for me. He said my search would end here. When he first told me, it hurt, like a cramp deep in my gut, almost making me sick. Very quickly that pain made me angry and the anger gave me resolve. Before me and my .357 were even on the road I had my first fantasy about cutting Judy’s throat.”

Aaron Cutler listens to my sermon while he is struggling against the binds that hold him in his kitchen chair. His binds are made from his wife’s stockings and taken from her drawer in the sweet spot. He’s grunting and occasionally wheezing through his gym sock gag that I found in a dusty gym bag. Underneath the dust it was brand new and probably never used, just one of the regrets that I will soon relieve him from.

When I talked I would shout at him on occasion or wave my pistol at him for effect, but I was impressed. Either he was really brave, or Judy was one stone cold bitch. Held to a chair by matching binds the happy housewife’s head lay on his shoulder. She was dead, cut from ear to ear. Even when the blood spattered and little gurgling screams escaped from the gash I put in her neck, he never even flinched. No tears, no screaming, nothing. All he did was work to get loose. It was futile work, but he was game if nothing else. I can always respect that.

“Well…that’s how I found you kidnappers.”

His struggle intensified in disagreement with my assessment of what they had done. I roared at him, to take his fight. “Even if the government says that someone ought to take a child from his parents don’t make it hurt less…alright!

After breaking into the Cutler’s I stuck to the plan even though all I wanted to see was his room. I brought the gun, but true to form I had acquired everything else I needed to take them from out of their own possessions. While clearing the house I saw a family portrait sitting on a metal desk in a rather military looking office. When I saw the photo I was so happy to see my son that I didn’t realize I had seen him before.

If I hadn’t took the time for feelings I may have had the chance to see his room. Blocked by a large metal file cabinet, the window in the office looked out to the street in front of the house. A gap above the cabinet was enough for me to see the tires slow as they started to turn into the driveway. I was at the front door waiting for them. There failure to recognize me and the shiny .357 convinced them it was a robbery. They allowed me to tie them up.

The same family portrait from the office, but in a much larger size, sat in a cheap frame splattered with a little blood, directly above Aaron’s head on the kitchen wall. The moment hits me so hard that it hurt physically. I met my son and we still never met. It slowly resonated in my head, again and again, each time striking like a grandfather clock in an otherwise empty room. “This is my partner. Marcus Cutler, dude gets down.”

I was missing some details. Little Nicky knew my son, but he couldn’t have known he was my son. The revelations were overwhelming. The uncontrolled wave of feelings inhibited me, almost to the point of inebriation. I started asking questions to Aaron as if he could talk. When he didn’t answer me I cracked him with a backhand that split his lips and freed his gag.

“I’m fucking gagged!” His voice was stronger than his looks. Maybe this was even the first time he heard himself talk that way. My panic was obvious, it may have emboldened him, but I knew it was his last stand.

“Aaron, every man matures to a point that is the middle. You know you’ve reached the middle, when the beginning becomes hazy, but the end is crystal clear. Can you see it Aaron? It’s the broad view that makes you white men buy Corvettes, or leave your wives for young girls, or boys for that matter. It’s all just running though. Y’all running away from the same thing, that eventual, inevitable long sleep in a wooden box. I made the choice to stop running a long time ago. Now it’s your turn Aaron. Make the choice.”

Aaron stopped struggling.

“Is that Dillinger?” I asked pointing pistol at the picture above him. He couldn’t have known what I knew and chose to play games. But I ended them quickly.

He glances up with a quizzical look and says “Dillin-who?”

This time I hit him like a man and cut the time he might have spent brushing in half.

“Jesus! Yes! It’s him, it’s him! His head dropped and he never looked back up, but I knew he was crying.

“You’re calling out for Jesus? Aren’t you a fucking Jew?” I put him down like a cur dog, point blank, behind the ear. The muzzle fire from my pistol singed some of his hair, briefly fouling the scent of gunpowder. Someone else’s gun refreshed it. Three shots of molten metal pierced my back with fervor, sending me crashing face first to the kitchen floor. The ceramic tile introduced itself to my jaw as cold and hard. But even if the tile had been ice, the relief for my already swelling cheek would be in vain. At first I didn’t understand why things had happened this way, but now it is clear.

More Carl’s than Margaret’s, Judy’s ugly feet stared back at me. They looked to be the same size as her husband’s I thought, lying in my place, beneath my victims, bleeding on their kitchen floor. I didn’t want the last thing I ever pondered to be Judy and Aaron’s matching hemp sandals, so I rolled over on my back and raised my eyes enough to see the blood-spattered picture of my son.

“He found you.” Little Nicky