Fiction: Marauders
By Aditya Bhatia
When faced directly with death, he
realized how woefully unprepared life had made him for the moment.
He’d become aware of the instrument
as early as he imagined everyone else did: no higher than the knee of a parent,
ingesting the hastily animated Hasbro heroes liberate the world from recurring
evils, occasionally down for the count but always, eventually, victorious. He’d
become acquainted with it not much later. His father, a (then lanky, now
approaching rotund) man of good spirit and loudly voiced opinions, had taken
him—no younger than seven—into the brush, while whispering about the serenity
of the abandoned. A thick mist hovered in the forest, and he’d noticed that the
snaps and cracks when they ceased to move were infrequent, as though whatever
life was there was hesitant to resume. They knew that their footfall was
dangerous.
The butt pressed into his shoulder,
he closed his left eye, and his father told him to see it as an extension of
himself. If he did that, then it would sail true.
The doe’s marble eye held nothing.
It was an empty, shiny mirror in which he saw the stretched, monstrous version
of himself lording over, the architect of Disney’s most iconic trauma, and
though he felt some pause over the extinguishing, he couldn’t help but push the
feeling away as the hand came down hard upon his shoulder bringing his gaze
away from the corpse and to the lit up face of the paterfamilias. It was one of
the great moments of his life.
With time, the steel maw turned
flesh. Hesitation and respect melted away, and left dripping the mundane. So,
to look into it while another held it was to revert it back to its original
state, the state it always existed in, the state he forgot.
“Give me the fucking cash. And the
drugs. Don’t fucking do anything stupid. Don’t fucking think of calling the
cops. Don’t fucking do anything except what I tell you.”
He sat in his driveway, moonlit,
salt stinging his eyes, hands shaking. A grand, nearly, in both paper and
product taken, and the whole of his life placed in front of him. He imagined
his obituary and saw that there was little, if anything, beyond parentage and
what he meant to them to recount. He was transient—this he’d always known—but
he’d thought that by his age, nearly an adult, there’d be something beyond his
progenitors that differentiated him, defined him. A twig in a gale. Sweat
pooled in his crevices; he could feel the fabrics being weighed down.
The ebony face haunted his
subconscious. Dark as the hole from which death would come, teeth bared,
profanity prepared, degrading him and enlightening him to what savagery meant.
In the light of the day one thing
became clear: this situation wasn’t random. Fright had blinded him but now
anger allowed him to see. He’d procured his wares from a connection of an
acquaintance, an African American man in an apartment complex half an hour from
his own community, a complex where, at the exit, were spikes to destroy tires
should one try to enter through it. His assailant, the guilty party, was also
of the race, and collusion was the only possibility. He, someone-to-be, wanders
into this hovel, obviously well-to-do, better than this cretin would ever be,
and what accumulates but that emerald emotion. He, the peddler, stuck in this
cycle, sees who this country really belongs to, a tourist in his life of
sordidness, and decides that a lesson has to be taught. So, he calls up his
homeboy and tells him to find a way to get on this kid’s list, get in the car,
and take back what he’d already paid for and pry from him all of that which
he’d made on it as well. He could see them now: shrouded in smoke, laughing it
up, unable to be heard over the bass boosted versions of that shit he couldn’t
stand. Those stupid fucking spooks.
In the lunchroom he was surrounded
by his people. He held court, regaling them with the tragedy befallen, but
leaving from his explanation the fear which he’d felt. Because, when he thought
of it now, it wasn’t fear that had driven his decision making, it wasn’t fear
that let the hoodlum abscond with that which was his, no, it was pragmatism. It
wasn’t prudent to wrestle for the gun and take one in the belly. It wasn’t
prudent to wail and cry and be taken down for a crime that wasn’t his. He wasn’t
doing anything illegal. They pushed it into communities and created
addictions. They ravaged the unsuspecting and they created the next generation
of criminal. They couldn’t help themselves. They didn’t know any better. He was
an entrepreneur. He knew that his clientele could prevent recreation from
becoming habit. He wasn’t peddling to anyone who didn’t want it. He wasn’t
ruining lives or destroying families. He was the supplier of some weekend fun.
This was a funny story to tell over dinner someday. If he acted rashly in that
moment, it could’ve been the end of his life. But if he acted intelligently
now, it would be the end of theirs.
His boys’ blood was hot, and they
whooped and hollered at the suggestion of forming a posse. They were going to
ride into the night and rain vengeance unseen since the days of yore, the days
of Sherman and Lee, and they were going to pay homage to their heritage and
earn back their honor, taken from them so cruelly.
They blazed down the roads in the
night, blood-stained banner flapping in the wind. They were like Quantrill’s
Raiders back from the grave—Bill Q. and the James Brothers themselves—looking
to scorch earth. Ruby explosions lit up the sky and he both literally and
figuratively saw red.
Steps were retraced. The spook had
asked to meet by the Waffle House, and they went there first. He didn’t think
he saw his car, and he wasn’t inside the establishment, but they had begun to
feel their stomachs rumble, and they figured a quick break was in order.
Four All-Star Specials and two
steak and eggs later they were back on the street. They’d come locked and
loaded. They showed off their hardware, awed at the gauge and caliber, hungry
to see what it would do when the time came. They went ninety in forty-fives and
ninety-five in fifties and only slowed when the map told them an officer was
near.
They circled the area, searching
for the beat-up Pinto, but the streets were empty. It was just like those trips
with his father: life was hesitant to show itself because it knew he was there
and it knew what he was ready to do. An hour passed and with it the initial
craze which they’d ridden. Cooled blood began to bring about a clear sense of
the proposed action, and though none of them would admit that second thoughts
were being had, they’d all begun to feel the weight. They had been capable of
looking into the still eyes of animals, the question was could they turn this
man into the same thing? He felt their waning enthusiasms and thought once
again about his life unlived and then announced, “Fuck it, if we can’t find him
that doesn’t matter. I was set up. And I know exactly where that motherfucker
is.”
The arms were up, they were always
up, and they rolled in unobstructed. Trees were being felled by the leasing
company, and the bodies were piled along the sides of the road. They arrived at
the building, thirty-six, and he got out, told his boys to hold back, and
walked to the door. He was out of sight of the truck and had begun to mimic his
robbed self. His heart punched repeatedly, trying to force its way out, and
he’d again begun to perspire regardless of the cold. His hand shook as knuckles
brushed PVC and before he could think the door had swung open. His dealer stood
there, shirtless, red-eyed, obviously confused. Here he was, face-to-face with
the enemy, and his throat dried with a lump preventing words.
“The fuck you doing here? You need
something? Christ. This is fucked up. Git. I don’t wanna hear from you again.
Git on now. Fuck outta here.”
He vanished as quickly as he’d
appeared.
He walked in a way he hoped masked
defeat and back in sight of his posse he pulled the knife he’d kept from his
pocket and held it so that the white light of the moon glinted off of it. He
walked up to the car in front of him, a tan Camry, and stabbed each wheel. The
soft hiss filled the otherwise silent night and, at first, they couldn’t quite
believe they were seeing what they were, but once it sunk in, they began to
shout and cheer. The ruckus was overwhelming and he ran to the car, still
running, and pulled out quickly, rubber screaming, leaving the crime scene
behind. He wasn’t sure who the Camry belonged to.
Aditya Bhatia is a writer/filmmaker from
Atlanta, Georgia. His work can be found at Don't Submit, ExPat Press, Eulogy
Press, and Whiskey Tit Journal. He was also a credited writing
apprentice on Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis.