Brandon Marshall Writing

“Two eggs over easy, side of bacon, and home fries, babe,” Darrell said to the waitress at the counter.

            The drive from Miami to Toledo had him exhausted, but he always looked forward to his reward after each successful delivery – a hot meal. He was grateful for the thirty minute break he earned after every completed job. He made a point of visiting Pam’s every time he was in Ohio for work. For one, he thought Jenny, the morning waitress was cute and liked to flirt with her. Secondly, no home fries on this Earth compared to Pam’s.

            “Darrell, you don’t have to tell me your order,” Jenny replied with a wink. “You don’t think I have it memorized after the past eighty years?”

            Wow, eighty years I’ve been doing this he thought. The time had flown by. He let his mind wander to the day that changed his life forever.

***

            “All right boys, we’re pulling up. Everyone got their strap?” Big Mac said. The Dodge Charger sputtered in anticipation. The cabin was thick with blunt smoke.

            Darrell hadn’t wanted this life, but his neighborhood didn’t give young boys the most options in life. At just 19 years old, he found himself responsible for two kids and a girlfriend. He knew he should’ve listened to his mother and gone to college, but how? She didn’t understand the struggle. Leaving the streets of Detroit just wasn’t on the table. 

This was his second job with the crew. The first had been a bust – a carjacking gone wrong. He remembered the pounding of his heart. She just wouldn’t get out of the car. He had panicked. Why hadn’t she just gotten out? He saw her face every time he closed his eyes; her pupils were fixed; blood dripped from bullet lodged in her forehead. He thought about the man who he had stabbed outside the car. Had he survived? This job was a bit more complicated. He had to prove himself tonight or he was dead.

“Let’s go get this stupid fuck,” Chedda said, racking his Glock-17. Big Mac loaded the last shell into his sawed-off shotgun and pumped one into the chamber. Beside Darrell, Pinkie topped off the last Molotov cocktail. Darrell squeezed his revolver with his clammy hands.

“Everyone got the plan?” Big Mac said, tossing his roach out the window. “We park here. Me, Chedda, and D take the alley and enter the trap house on the side. We’ll take care of Pork Chop. Pinkie, you’ll follow behind us. When we leave, you light her up.”

The crew exited the vehicle. The night was pleasant and almost too quiet. A police siren sounded in the distance. Darrell followed in the rear. I wonder if they’re expecting us Darrell thought.

The entry was silent and effortless, facilitated by Chedda’s glass cutter. After cutting a perfect circle into the side door, Chedda reached through and unlocked it.

The building appeared abandoned to the general public, but according to Big Mac’s intel, this is where Pork Chop was laying low. The crew sifted silently through the debris on the ground and drug paraphernalia strewn about, checking each room tactically.

Darrell knew he had to be the one to pull the trigger. He had to prove himself tonight, or it would be his head. He was growing more anxious by the second. The last person he killed was an accident – but this? This was cold-blooded murder.

Darrell crept slowly up a rotting staircase, the crew following his lead now. He was careful to check each step for noise, before gently placing his body weight on it. At the top of the staircase was a single door. Pork Chop has to be in there.

The crew gathered around the door while Darrell slowly turned the knob and there he was. Pork Chop was snoring; the moonlight peered onto him. He laid upon a single stained mattress on the ground, sleeping in the nude. His belly hung over the side of the mattress.

Without thought, Chedda snuck to him quickly, straddling him. In seconds, Pork Chop was awake and struggling, but with one swift haymaker, he was again unconscious. The crew flipped him and bound his hands with zip ties. Bic Mac brought over a wooden chair from the corner of the room and together they placed him upright in the chair, binding each of his legs to the legs of the chair.

Pork Chop awoke with a gag and cough of blood. He spat an incisor toward Chedda. “Well, you fuckers got me, huh?” he said, with a smirk. “Whatever you do to me ain’t gonna bring Hayward back. That piece of shit couldn’t deliver the product, you know how the game works.”

“You dragged him into the job, just looking for an excuse to take him out,” Big Mac said.

Chedda looked to Darrell. “Let’s make this quick, man.”

“End him,” Big Mac said.

The crew placed themselves behind Pork Chop. Darrell lifted his revolver, arms trembling. He tasted the sweat on his upper lip as he nervously licked them. The girl’s face and scream flashed in his memory. The cold steel contacted the back of Pork Chop’s head.

“Nervous, aren’t you kid?” Pork Chop said. “You’re not cut out for this g—”

A single blast of the revolver pierced rapidly through Pork Chops occiput, blowing his brain contents forward, smattering the floor in front of him. His head dangled forward, lifelessly.

“Let’s go,” Big Mac said.

The crew exited the house. That was Pinkie’s cue. He lit his Molotov cocktails one by one, throwing them into each of the windows. The house went up in a roar. Sirens started in the distance and crew started toward the Charger.

“You motherfuckers,” a voice yelled from the front porch of the engulfed home.

Pork Chop was supposed to be alone.

A silhouette of flames in the shape of a man presented itself holding an AK-47. He opened fire at the shadows of the crew, spraying bullets into the street and adjacent buildings. The crew scrambled, taking cover behind the Charger. Bullets ricocheted around them.

“I got him,” Pinkie said. He lit his last remaining cocktail and tossed it over the Charger at the figure. The glass broke over the man’s head and fire poured over him. He stumbled forward and fired several more rounds at the crew until ultimately collapsing.

“We good?” Chedda asked everyone.

Darrell noticed his shirt began to soak with a sticky liquid. Panicked, he lifted his shirt to find a quarter sized hole in the center of his chest. His vision narrowed until it was gone.

“We gotta go, man,” Pinkie said. Blue and red lights could be seen quickly approaching down the street.

“What about D?” Chedda asked.

“Leave him,” Big Mac said, firmly.

Bubbles of red exited through Darrell’s mouth with each gurgling respiration.

***

“Get me three units of O-negative,” a shadow shouted from above him. “Can we please, prep the fucking OR?”

“Are you sure, doctor? We have only done this in consenting patients before?”

“It’s his only chance of survival.”