Dead Dog's Tale

In the quiet, inky blackness of early morning, I awoke with a start. The room was shrouded in darkness, the kind that seemed to swallow up even the faintest hope of light. My young mind, perhaps no older than five or six, instinctively knew the hour. Just past 3 a.m., that liminal time when the world teeters on the edge of something otherworldly. Anxiety bubbled up within me, a nameless fear that I couldn't yet articulate, but it was there, as real as the walls of the ranch-style house in Chino, California, where I lived. I can still trace the layout of that house in my mind, every corner, every shadowed hallway. Even then, I had an intimate knowledge of its contours, perhaps because there were times, just before dawn, when I would find myself in different parts of the house, far from the safety of my bed. The clock ticked toward 5 a.m., the hour when my father would rise, a man of little patience. His wrath was a thing to be avoided at all costs. The thought of flipping on a hall

Blood trickled profusely from her nose, cascading down, in, and over her busted lips, pooling at her feet, splattering on mine. Her left eye dangled from its socket, a gruesome pendulum. Tears and blood left a trail of misery on the floor of my double-wide. Her beautiful face, with its exotic features and dark caramel complexion, was beaten to a pulp. She was almost unrecognizable. It was hard to look at, harder still to maintain my calm. I teetered on the brink of going nuclear. But that’s not what she needed. She needed comfort and security. I would walk the warpath soon enough. She sobbed and wailed on my shoulder, and I held her tenderly until her sister arrived. The three of us solemnly discussed what would happen next. No cops. That was a given. The police would interfere with natural justice and add unnecessary complications. Her sister would drive her to a friend’s place outside Phoenix. Her ex-boyfriend wouldn’t think to look there. Her daughter would stay with her aunt and un

I took Razor at his word. I trusted that for him to get justifiable revenge on me, to stab me in the back and add that delicious twist of salt and lime to the wound, he would need to be helpful, for a little while at least. The Tiger Shark began to fill up with the usual riffraff and degenerates, and if I didn't want to run into anyone else with a grudge and a score to settle, I better hit the streets. Outside, Los Angeles roared with a life of its own; the heat wafted off into the open jaws of the darkening sky, turning to grit and grime that breathed on the pavement and the bodies of all who called this concrete jungle home. A cacophony of car horns, distant sirens, and the murmured conversations of the damned droned through the evening, not like the buzz of a beehive but a nest of hornets—one I was hell-bent on kicking. I wandered through alleys and avenues, a voyeur in a world where the line between sanity and madness blurred into insignificance. The alcohol was in full effect,