It's a Festivus Miracle! It's a Festivus Miracle!!
Gutter style. Which means, drugs, bad people, more drugs, worse people, and maybe some ham.
Gutter style. Which means, drugs, bad people, more drugs, worse people, and maybe some ham.
Katy's Christmas by Donald Glass
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I slipped the lock to the back door and slung the baseball
bat over my shoulder as we crept inside silently. We'd been there before on
buys, so we knew the basic layout of the place. I wanted to go in alone but
Katy insisted on coming. I made my way around to the side of the kitchen
slowly, keeping low, being as quiet as possible. Katy watched the hall for any
sign of movement.
It was a nice house, way better than our place. He had money,
all drug dealers do, but you'd never know it by the way he lived. Dishes overflowed
the sink and garbage lay everywhere. He lived like a pig. I looked around the
kitchen and immediately saw what we came for.
Baggies of heroin, ready for distribution, littered the
kitchen table. Cocaine, marijuana, and crack were stacked next to them. He was
into everything. I practically started to drool just looking at it; we'd hit the
mother lode. I hadn’t fixed all day and my insides were itching. I had to
scratch it soon.
Twinkling light from the Christmas Tree in the living room
cast everything in a slow strobe effect that was disconcerting. I heard the
creak of a floorboard and the loud click of a gun being cocked. I froze. Suddenly
the room lit up and there was a .357 Magnum pointing at Katy. He recognized
her, and that split second of recognition gave me the opening I needed.
I swung the baseball bat blindly around the corner as hard
as I could. It struck him in the knee. A crack filled the room as his knee
crumpled the wrong way. He went down, grimacing in pain. I jumped up and hit
him three more times, the last one connecting with his head. He lay unconscious
but alive, moaning.
A shuffling stirred from down the hall and a child came
walking out of his bedroom, sleepy and disoriented. He was maybe two, still in
a diaper, which hung low with piss and shit. He looked like he hadn’t been bathed
in days and there were bruises on the boy’s arm in the shape of a hand print. A
hollow, vacant look defined his eyes, which turned to surprise upon seeing us.
Katy and I exchanged a look. We hadn’t known there was a
kid. We’d never seen one when we’d copped. Then again, we never stuck around
long. She stared at the child for a solid minute, no one saying a word. Then anger
and sorrow filled her face. She put the gun
away and walked him back to his room. I assumed to change his diaper and
promise that things would be OK. She had a way with children.
Two seconds later, she came back into the living room,
alone, and picked up the gun. She grabbed a pillow from the couch, and using it
to muffle the shot, she put two in his head. Just like that. It hardly made a
sound. She disappeared back down the hall still carrying the pillow and the
gun.
In full panic mode I finished stuffing the drugs into my bag.
Things had gone way too far. No one was supposed to die. We were supposed to be
in and out. No witnesses. Katy came walking out of the bedroom with the boy
wrapped in a blanket. Covering the boy's head, so he wouldn’t see the mess, she
side-stepped the pooling blood and stopped at the door.
"We are taking him too," she said, then went
outside without saying another word. There was no discussion, I understood.
Katy sat in the back with the boy cradled in her arms. He
was fast asleep, a faint smile on his lips. He looked angelic. I smiled and
gave her a knowing wink. We didn’t take him for ransom, we didn’t want any
money. We'd raise him and give him a better life, a future, a chance to make
something of himself.
"I'll be right back," I said, and went back into
the house. I took the meager presents that were under the tree, and loaded them
into the trunk. Katy smiled at me when I got back into the car.
"A kid has to have something to open on Christmas
morning," I said.
