Chapter 2: part 2:
This Aint Yo mamas House
[Milo]
Where did the fucking road go?
Where did the 9th ward go…"Sam" I felt my voice finally croak away from the fumigation gas catastrophe….
I felt like I was back in California… in…
As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I found myself being pulled back into the past. The black void that took over my sight morphed, the walls stretching and contorting, the black abyss twisted and turned into faded wallpaper and the scent of crack-head piss replaced by the pungent smell of stale blood and decay.
I was back at our old shitty feces-colored house in Rosamond, California, 2005.
I instantly looked down at my hands, my dark brown fingers small and chubby as they were when I was a kid…
…shit why do I keep coming back to this moment… isn't there anything else worth replaying in my head? The howling and sweeping winds screamed against the old house's glass window panes sending shockwaves of dread up my small spine.
The familiar white-hot terror washed over me as I realized I was shifting into another "episode" as Sam likes to call it.
In the corner of the dark desert sunroom, my father was hunched over. His skin, usually a dull brown, seemed to shimmer in the dim light, a sickly green.
This was NOT how I remembered it…. Everything was twisted and sinister, it felt like the house itself was digesting my entire soul.
A fucking 7-foot tall, mafia-suited freak with a shitty paper grocery store bag stood beside him, his spectral form flickering and his whispery voice echoing throughout the room, commanding my stupid sick fuck of a father to build some kinda…Effigy.
Nails screeched against wood and glass seeming to come from every angle. My father obediently dragged a piece of splintered and jagged bone from a victim of his latest slaughter. He seems to lurch like a saggy bayou log over to the center of the room.
His eyes were vacant and possessed sickly vibrant purple swirls that replaced what little light my father even had.
One by one, he started dragging their desecrated corpses. arranging the bodies and viscera of his victims, their lifeless black doll-like eyes staring into nothingness as he arranged the heads at the bottom; they crushing under the weight of their dismembered body parts.
Eyes gushing rank brown blood and brain matter as their rotted flesh seemed to meld together in this hellscape.
My father's long dreads covered his tattooed face as he pulled out a butcher knife and viciously hacked a pale shin and foot combo up onto the nasty ass sacrificial alter
The grisly sight was sickening, the sickly sweet rotten metallic odor of death overpowering my senses, an arcid and goey taste on the back of my tongue.
I was paralyzed, unable to move or look away. The sick, bag-headed NBA reject's maniacal laughter filled the space, a chilling, guttural sound that pierced my muscles and sinews like wasps violently embedding themselves into my flesh.
Suddenly, the room darkened as shadows slithered in through the gaps in the filthy blood-soaked floorboards, the space under the doors, and the cracks in the shit-stained windows.
They manifested and twisted, taking the forms of demonic half-animal figures. I could feel their malevolent gazes on me, their monstrous forms towering over my small pitiful child body. Their gnashing teeth and abnormally grotesque muscles pulsed with dark spiritual energy.
The giant suited man turned to face me, even more terrifying in the presence of the otherworldly creatures slithering about. Every second I spent there stretched into god-forsaken epochs of misery and trauma.
His greasy blood-spotted bagged head wrinkled as his face met mine, and for the first time, I could see him clearly. His features squeezing with squelching vanta black tendrils seeping into what I now realize was not a suit…but his actual body.
I was trapped in my past, forced to relive my own bleak and scarring childhood nightmare, and there was no escape as my body was unable to move I felt everything fade to black around me once again in the void.
I wasn't even going to pretend like I remembered what happened after Sam and that shit-fuck "detective" stopped talking….I DO remember the feeling of sweet….sweet FRESH fucking oxygen and the smell of plastic.
"Oh good he's back with us" I heard the gorgeous voice of some sort of angel bringing me from the precipice of death by bug bomb.
My eyes shot open, and I flinched as I reeled from how bright the lights were in this, GODAMNIT! Sam's tiny sadistic jello shot-infused brain of course decided to bring me to the hospital.
My eyes fell on the most god awfully ugly ass…oh wait "fuck you SAM" The second my eyes met his stupid face; he smiled like it wasn't his fault.
"Oh my" the same angelic voice soothed my anger again. I turned to see a beautiful nurse, kinda older but hey….if this lady saved my life she's 'aight. "You shouldn't be so mean to your Big Brother like that, he carried you in here…"
"BULLL SHIT the only thing Sam carried in here is an incurable…" I paused as my ripped-up, poisoned lungs woke up from the same state of near-death my mind was teetering.
I nearly coughed out every last cell in my lungs for a solid minute as she began ignoring me with a glare placed right on my now un-covered infected tattoo, which ironically I got the words "HATE ME" I am now slightly regretting my own satire…
"Your "lovely brother" will be fine once he keeps this oxygen tank on and stops….screeching so much." She broke eye contact for a moment as she flipped the chart she had one page over.
"I am lovely…thank you gorgeous" I awkwardly tried to wink but all I managed to do was creepily crease my face blocked by the luxurious oxygen mask. I felt my sanity coming back a little as I noticed Sam shift uncomfortably.
"oliM this nice lady works for Mr. Richards" My brother seemed abnormally formal, which means he was tense.
"Oh yeah…and who is-" I just let my sentence hang as I raspily breathed in more pure O2 into my lungs. I gestured with my hand for the sentence to continue…I'm very conscious now that I have no more Xanax, we have a problem.
The foxy nurse shook her head annoyedly "Mr. Richards is the reason you aren't dead… You trying my patience" She tapped her foot on the…wait wood floors
For the first time, I was observant with non-fumi-fused cells in my brain; I was in a windowless mock hospital room with grey-toned wood floors. The window was just a weird satanic painting full of writhing black bodies in a bog.
"I know you have questions but to be honest with you" Her eyes flashed black like a shark for a second, I feel like since we've been in Louisiana I've seen stranger and stranger shit. It's not just now anytime im not popping pills like a reverse Pez dispenser….im not sure it's like I can see…
"I can tell from the vacant look in your eyes you are not as good of a listener as Samael, so here's the short version: you and your brother are gonna investigate my boss's political rival with your little "business".
She smiled without moving her eyes from Sam, it felt like she was fucking roasting us over a spit and she was doing nothing….very attractive. Sam must have seen me daydreaming because he kept shooting me blank stares every few seconds.
"All you do is get dirt on this guy: Marvin Yater. If you can get the medallion around his neck it's an extra bonus…." She shot me a glance like I wasn't allowed to be in the room anymore. The walls felt tight as the air seemed to be running out in the small Fuex hospital room.
"You have said nothing about payment, whats-" she cut me off sharply. "Your medical bills are the payment for section A"
DAMNIT! I felt myself wince for my still aching wallet.
"While if you're able to get the medallion no questions asked….Mr. Richards will have you guys on retainer while you gallivant all over town" She turned what I thought were my medical charts.
This crazy ass lady just handed me a fucking business contract!
"You bet your sweet ass im getting that BONUS" I signed my name for the first time in my adult life….that wasn't a forgery.
Jesus, I need to get my life together after this…
[Samael]
We stood in a beautifully designed black chrome elevator not even 30 seconds after my brother's release from this dingy 4-story office building.
"Milo?" I turned to my twin trying to gauge his thoughts…I wondered why he wasn't sullen or throwing a petulant moronic tantrum when that dubious secretary handed him that contract.
"SH…SHSHSH….Sam" He had the strangest smile as he breathed in another raspy gasp of air. The miniature baby blue oxygen tank splits us in the elevator space. "Thanks, dawg! You really fuckin did it bro!"
I felt my face scrunch into a defensive smile much like an animal bearing its fangs. "No….problem? You aren't slighted by me?" I made sure to let him know I was looking him in the eyes as the elevator door opened.
The lobby was a sleazy claustrophobically cramped pawnshop full of broken dreams, lost lives, and the unwanted filth of the city. "Nah Sam ironically if you weren't such an asshole we wouldn't almost have a job."
He briskly walked pushing the doors open to the pawnshop like he was in some weird po'boy version of "the great gatsby"
I tried to walk calmly out onto the ninth wards cracked streets but I had a rising suspicion that this was not a good idea
…we seemed to be playing into a grander scheme, this whole mysterious benefactor making strange deals….The Bagman's silence seconds before that woman approached me with her boss's "help"....I have never been a fanatic for patterns and coincidence when it came to my fickle and meager existence.
"So….where do we start, that "nurse" give you any details on this Scum-Bag Yater?" My brother with his air of unusual manic happiness was beginning to unnerve me.
I looked down at the slightly creased yellow business card with a very sharply dressed pale yellow tone southern black man. "It says he is some sort of….what the fuck."
I really should have trusted my instincts when I thought this was a bad idea.
"It says he's the first Anti-God megachurch pastor-" I tried not to let Milo see any hesitation in me, I felt he was already having a bad day. In his manic states, he tends to enact his delusions of grandeur on unsuspecting participants in our schemes
He let out a loud laugh that was muffled by the oxygen mask he seemed to be drinking the contents of. "Well this should be easy… a couple of knuckleheads doing a chain snatch with a hint of extortion"
My brother's dark brown eyes seemed to have restored color now "All we gotta do is attend some stupid church sermon…." He turned back to look at me for the first time since he exploded out of the doors like a Broadway play.
"It's not tonight, but we can go to his residence and steal the medallion. Guys like this always have their information readily available to anyone." I chuckled before I could say something witty Milo cut me off.
"Even piece of shit puss-bags like us" he put his arm around my shoulder as he was nearly clicking his heels….I am wildly uncomfortable with any nonviolent skin contact, but I will allow it for now.
"Yes …even lowly pustules like us.." We stepped onto the bus that we always scam the fee, apprehensive and quiet
dang boi its over, see ya next time