Brick (Double Dippin') (31 page)

Theodore thought we were only gon’ jack the nurse’s car. Raping, robbing, and finally bodying that broad was an afterthought. All my idea, but I let Theodore take the fall. Shit, that nigga was legally an adult. I was only minor.

He wasn’t innocent, anyway. After he got over the initial shock, he took those sloppy seconds after I got off the bitch. One thing about niggas, they ain’t got no morals or scruples when there’s some available pussy to be had.

I bring my thoughts back to the present and I notice that one minute the bitch in the driver’s seat is calling her man, telling him to come fuck me up, and the next minute she’s twisting around in her seat, acting like she’s tryna hand me the phone.

I recoil. “I don’t wanna talk to that nigga!” I look at Brick, expecting him to take control of this situation; the bitch is taking shit too far. But Brick is still fucking with the plastic bag filled with weed.

“Bitch, you crazy,” I say. She’s actually jabbing me in my shoulder with the phone, trying to get me to say something to her man.

Suddenly, I feel a jolt of the most profound pain that I’ve ever experienced. I’m going berserk. Jerking like I’m being electrocuted. Shit hurts like a mufucka. What the fuck! I can’t get my mouth to form any words.

After five or six incredibly long seconds, she finally pulls that fucking phone away from my shoulder. I’m tryna make sense of this. My mouth is about to cooperate and talk…and goddamn it, the bitch jabs me on the thigh.

This time, I piss my pants.

I
feel a pair of powerful arms pulling me out of the car. I’m dazed, but I sense foul play. “What’s going on?” The words come out slurred, like I’m drunk. No one responds. I guess they can’t understand me.

“Damn, this fool done peed on hisself!”

I recognize Brick’s voice and realize he’s dragging me across gravel.

Where is he taking me?
I wonder, growing hysterical. I struggle as best I can, but I’m too fucked up to put up a fight.

A creaking door opens and I instinctively go wild—thrashing and trying to dig my heels into the ground. The dude gives me a hard yank. Now I’m inside a dark, cavernous place.

A light shines, blinding me. The bitch is holding a big flashlight, the kind that you carry with a handle. I look around, and it seems like I’m in some kind of an abandoned warehouse.

“Ew! It stinks in here, Brick,” the crazy chick says. “What’s that smell?”

“That’s sewage.”

“Did you hear that noise? Oh, my God, Brick! What was that?” she whispers in a scared voice.

“Probably mice,” Brick says. “Nothing to be worried about. Ain’t nobody in here but us.”

“This place is creepy,” she comments in a shuddering voice.

I’m a little dazed right now, but as soon as I get my head right,
I’ma fuck Brick up for tryna play me. He’s a muscular dude, but I ain’t no lightweight. He got a little bit of height on me, but I’m cut and chiseled my damn self, and I hold my own in a fair fight.

While the chick is complaining about the smell, I realize my pants are soggy. Overwhelmed by the smell of my pissed-up pants and the rank odor inside this joint they brought me to, I’m close to vomiting.

Brick is dragging me all crazy, banging my head against shit. He ain’t got the least bit concern about my well-being. I’m furious that this big brute is handling me like I ain’t nothing more than a rag doll.

What the hell did I do to these two nuts to deserve this kind of treatment? I tried to defend dude when the bitch was coming at him, talking all greasy, and this is the thanks I get? That bitch played me. She was pretending to talk on a fake cell phone. That fucking cunt kept tasering me like I’m some kind of wild animal.

I need some answers, so I speak up. “What’s this shit about?” My voice is surprisingly clearer now. “This shit y’all doing ain’t cool,” I say in a bitter hiss.

That nutty broad gives me another hot zap on a piss-stained part of my pants. There’s a terrible sizzling sound. “Agghhhh!” I yell in agony as I drop into a heap on a concrete floor. I know the cunt is crazy; I don’t know why I even opened my mouth.

Everything hurts. My leg she zapped feels like it’s being fried. My heart is booming so hard, I think I’m about to go into cardiac arrest.

“No more. Please! Stop using that stun gun on me,” I beg when my body stops jerking and twitching. I hear chains rattling behind me. I wanna yank my head around to see what dude is doing behind me, but my body parts ain’t functioning right. This bitch is fucking up my nervous system, tasering me with that fake phone every time I open my mouth to say something.

“Hold the light up,” Brick says, harshly.

Moments later, he’s pulls me up on my feet, roughly yanks my arms up over my head, and binds my wrists together with a chain.
This is bananas!
I think as I’m being hoisted upward. They got me hanging by a hook or something. I’m not up too high; my feet are dangling only a few inches from the ground.

“You drawlin’, man. I ain’t do nothing to you.”

“Shut up!” Brick’s face is hard. I’m thinking the chick must be his woman. Maybe he’s upset by the way I came at her in the car.

“This is kind of extreme,” I tell him. “Yo, man, I apologize. I ain’t mean to disrespect that bitch.”

“Did you hear what he called me?” the bitch says.

Brick doesn’t say a word. He’s smiling in a sinister way, like he’s about to go ham on my ass.

“
Bitch
is only an expression. It don’t mean anything.” That’s some real bitchassness that just came outta my mouth, but I can’t hold up against another zap from that stun gun.

“Oh, it don’t mean nothing? Seriously?” The bitch’s tone is sarcastic. She hands the dude the flashlight and pulls a gun out of nowhere, cocks it real quick, and pulls the trigger.

“Ahhh! Goddamn,” I shriek as the bullet tears through my sneaker, striking the top of my foot. “What the fuck you do that for?” I look down at my sneaker, and gawk at the small circle of blood. I’m freaking out now, jerking and thrashing, trying to break free of this fuckin’ chain.

“Let me down, yo!” I holler. “I gotta get to the hospital and let a doctor look at my foot! And my chest…man, it’s hurting real bad! My heart ain’t beating right!”

The bitch turns her mouth down and shakes her head. “Who’s the bitch now?”

My foot is throbbing so bad, I don’t even wanna
think
the word “bitch,” let alone speak it!

“Seriously. I need medical attention. Whatever I said that pissed you off, I apologize, Miss,” I say to the chick in a sincere tone. Then I appeal to Brick. “I don’t want any problems, man. I ain’t got no beef with you. Just let me go—let me outta here.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” the broad says. She walks toward me with the gun. I start jerking and flinching, expecting her to fire the weapon again. It’s frustrating not being able to shield my face with my arms.

“I got beef with you!” She’s smiling and smirking like she’s proud of herself.

“This gotta be a mistake. I ain’t never seen you a day in my life!” I turn my attention to Brick. “This is a joke. Y’all punking me, right?”

“Take a good look at me. Don’t I look familiar?” She steps closer. Brick shines the light on her mug; there’s nothing familiar about her face.

“Some people say I resemble my mother.”

I begin to shake a little. The pain in my foot is killing me. Plus, what this broad is saying about resembling her mother is creeping me out.

“You and Theodore Belgrade thought it was funny when you were throwing stones at my mother,” she says, looking me in the eye.

Now I know who she is, and the knowledge has me shaking like a leaf. She’s shaking, too—from anger—not fear. One side of her mouth is twitching like she’s about to go into an epileptic fit. This chick is carrying a horrible grudge.

“That wasn’t me. I mean, that situation wasn’t my idea. Theodore was the mastermind,” I blurt.

“Shut up, liar.” She looks at Brick. “You ready to do your thing, Brick?”

“Whoa, whoa! I was only a kid back then. I’m rehabilitated. I swear to God. Ask my therapist.”

Brick is bending, taking something out of a dark bag. I have no idea what he plans on doing to me. My mind is racing, trying to come up with a way to get out of this predicament. There’s gotta be a way for me to save my ass.

Brick backs up a little and aims something at me. It’s so dark, I can’t make out what it is. Assuming he’s holding a gun, I squeeze my eyes shut and prepare to die.

Something small and hard hits me in my forehead. “Ow! What the fuck you doin’, man?” I can feel a knot swelling up on my forehead.

“Bull’s eye! You see that shit! I got him smack in the middle of his forehead,” Brick brags to the lunatic chick.

“You enjoy hitting women with stones, huh? Well, I thought I’d give you a taste of how it feels.” He puts a crazy-ass, high-tech-looking slingshot in front of my face.

“This is high-powered shit. I’m taking it to another level; using steel ball bearings instead of stones.”

“Help!” I yell as loud as I can, twisting and kicking, jangling the chain.

“Stop whining like a little bitch!” Brick punches me in the gut.

The assault knocks the wind out of me. I groan and gurgle as I try to catch my breath.

“Shut him up!” the chick says and hands dude a roll of duct tape. I’m struggling to get away from him, but I can’t. He wraps the black tape around my mouth and the back of my head. Not once, not twice…this nigga done wrapped this shit around my head three times! Now I’m completely vulnerable.

“This is retribution, man. An eye for an eye.” He steps back, aims and fires. Ping! The next piece of steel hits me in the left eye.

Son of a bitch!
Blood is trickling. That ball bearing ain’t no joke.

“Wow, Brick. You got skills,” the slut says. “You messed his eye up!”

I feel like my eye is hanging out of the socket, but I can’t move my hands to investigate. I wanna touch my eye, and wipe the blood away. I need to find out what’s what with my vision. I’m moaning and groaning, terrified I don’t have my sight. I swear to God, I don’t wanna end up blind in one eye.

Ow!
He just hit me in the nose with one of those fuckin’ little balls. My nose is bleeding. What kind of savage mufucka uses a high-powered slingshot on a mufucka? This shit is bananas. This bull is really tryna kill me! I gotta wiggle off this chain some kind of way, and get the hell out of this slaughterhouse.

He hits me in the other eye.
Ahh!
God! Fuckin’ hell!
Goddammit,
now I can’t see shit. Please, God, please…I can’t be one of ’nem blind mufuckas walking around tapping on the sidewalk with a fuckin’ stick. And I don’t wanna be tugged around by a mangy-ass, seeing-eye dog, either.

I tell myself that my eyesight is fine; it’s only blood blocking my vision. No way in the world that a cool dude like me can go through life selling pencils…holding out a cup, and begging mufuckas for spare change.

I’m tryna beg these two lunatics for mercy, but they can’t understand a word I’m saying. If I get a chance to plead my case, I’m sure I can convince this wacko broad that Theodore raped and killed her mother. The jury believed me, so why is she going to the extreme to get vigilante justice?

“It’s my turn,” the whore’s daughter says.

It’s her turn to do what!
I feel her presence. She’s standing close to me. I don’t know what to expect. Is she gon’ shank me now. Cut off my dick? Gripped by fear, I tremble as if convulsing.

“My mother was a decent woman. She never did anything to you,” she says in a voice that’s brittle and unforgiving. “What happened to make you an evil monster at such a young age?”

I can’t talk, so I shrug.

“My mother told you animals she had a family at home. A husband and a daughter. Me! I’m Anya. It was my name she screamed while you stoned her. She was screaming, thinking of the life I’d have to live without a mother!”

Pop! Pop!
I wasn’t prepared for the sudden gunshots. With a slug in each kneecap, I go into a state of shock that leaves me numb for a few moments. I’m not aware of sound or pain. But the calming numbness doesn’t last forever. My bullet-punctured body is seized by unbearable pain that causes me to writhe and utter miserable sounds.