Christmas at the Maratzzos

If you haven’t been to Christmas at the Maratzzos, then you haven’t been at any Christmas at all.

Indeed, it was a splendid gathering for a splendid time of year. Often while purchasing supplies for the party, members of the Maratzzo blood would look upon other shoppers and silently look down at them with condescending glares, knowing that their Christmas get-together could not even come close to one that has been in esteemed practice for the past one hundred years.

However, this year all members of the Maratzzos knew it would be much different. It was not too long ago that Joseph Maratzzo, son of Don Maratzzo and next in line to be patriarch of the family, was released from the state prison. It was some time ago that Joseph raped and murdered a 14 year old girl of the bank of the Philamabury river. He was caught almost immediately, and was originally set to be sentenced to thirty years; however, lucky for him, Joseph’s father knew many people in the state legal system and his sentence was reduced to six.

Despite this, it wasn’t Joseph’s crime that was the problem. The Maratzzos have had a long history of running bad into the law – perhaps almost as long as their Christmas tradition – and so Joseph’s behavior could be easily excused. What was the real problem was Analissa Maratzzo, sister of Joseph, who for quite a few years now had been indoctrinated into a fledgling feminist movement. Analissa had known about Joseph’s felony and asked the family multiple times for him to not only be declined an invitation to the Christmas party, but also to be exiled from the family altogether – two punishments that carried much the same weight. Of course her pleas had fallen upon deaf ears, and eerily in the weeks coming up to the fateful Christmas gathering she had suddenly gone silent. Now was the night.

The first to arrive were cousins Pesco and Maribel. Pesco was a good friend of Joseph’s – their history extended much before Joseph’s prison sentence, and they in fact kept up their relationship via regular prison meetings. Maribel, born Maribel Shaufter, had been indoctrinated into the Maratzzos via marriage, and by this point had become used to their ways. She, much like Pesco, Don, and Don’s wife Maria, believed Joseph to actually be innocent, despite overwhelming evidence otherwise.

Ironically, the one person who believed this evidence was the next to show. Analissa came slung on the arms of her own boyfriend, Monticello, a hippy man from the west that her parents despised. Analissa herself said nothing off suspicion – in fact, she even gave her cousin Pesco a hug when she first saw him, which had always been seen as out of the ordinary, and likely the first hit that something was wrong.

After this followed some brief time where the family all got together in the living room to talk amongst one another. Monticello was introduced to Maribel by Analissa – though beyond that, she hardly said a word. Maria had thought to bring up Analissa’s disfavor towards Joseph multiple times, but continually decided against it. This all lead up to Joseph’s ultimate arrival.

He came with no one. He wore a fresh suit with a mahogany tie. His father was the first to greet him – then his mother, who embraced him with a warm hug. All this time Analissa stayed in the living room, never moving, waiting along until everyone else had finally gone into the dining room. She followed.

It was only when everyone finally settled that Don realized something was wrong. He turned toward Analissa to his right and in a gruff tone asked where Monticello was.

Analissa shrugged. “No idea, pa. Probably out having a smoke.”

“We’re about to have dinner and he’s out back having a smoke?”

“I’m not his mom.”

“I’m not saying you are, but he needs to be here. Go get his ass back.”

Joseph, who was aware of his sister’s distaste for him, perhaps tried to remedy the situation by siding with her and calming his father down. “I’m sure it won’t take him too long. Let’s just start now, alright?”

As agitated as Don was, he couldn’t help agreeing with his favorite son. And yet, as dinner went on, Monticello continued to be absent. By the end of the dinner, both Don and Maria seemed completely agitated. While they were distracted, Analissa tapped on Joseph and Pesco, who were sitting together.

“Can I talk to you both, for a bit? In private.”

Pesco knew what was coming, though perhaps Joseph was a bit more ignorant. Though Pesco tried to convince his cousin not to go through with it, Analissa had rushed them just enough that Pesco had no time to do it. And so the three made their way to the garage.

Perhaps a more romantic writer would say that, in the end, Joseph got what he deserved. But I am not a romantic – I, in all honesty, am more of a realist, and can say with complete certainty that Joseph Pescetti Maratzzo spent his last moments on Earth choking on a mixture of lead, vomit, and his own blood.

Pesco squirmed back into a corner while Analissa held the gun shakily in her hand.

“What the fuck, are you crazy? What are you thinking?” Pesco no longer seemed to have the mental stability to bargain with his captor. Though, as it appeared, Analissa herself didn’t quite know what to do either.

“I’m doing exactly what needs to be done, Pesco. I know injustice when I see it. I’m sorry you couldn’t see it the same way.”

Time stopped as Pesco looked for an out. In a quick and desperate leap he dashed toward the button to open the garage in hopes that he could get out just before Analissa could get a clear shot. Yet, as the door opened, he realized what was really going on.

The opened garage revealed Monticello in his black pickup. Analissa hopped on, though not without giving some last words to her cousin.

“I’ll be watching you and this family. Don’t try to pull any shit like this again, or I’ll know.”

By the time everyone else had come to investigate the noise from the garage, Analissa and her boyfriend were long gone. Don and Maria loomed and sobbed over the corpse of their once renowned son. One thing was for sure – Christmas would never be the same.

Bluesnake Lake

The boy met the girl on the rooftop of the Best Inn at the outskirts of the city, just as they had planned. It was peculiar – not many times, at least from what the boy could count, did she come before him. But this wasn’t like any other time. This time, the boy’s heart thumped irrhythmically. The only other time it had done that was when he saw her for the first time.

He sat next to her on the edge, overlooking a good portion of the city in front of them. At first, they didn’t speak. The boy offered his hand on the cement between them, and she took it. Her hand was small, and soft to the touch. He softly caressed it with his thumb, just as his mother had once done, when he was a child – when he came crying to her and she would let the boy put his head in her chest and put her hand atop his head and caress it, ever so gently, and it would calm the boy. It was one of the things he remembered from being a kid, and he hoped to apply it. He applied it that night.

“Talk to me. About anything.” He didn’t look at her, nor did she look at him – they just kept their hands interlocked, not firmly grasped but restfully handled.

“It just… it still hurts. It hurts and I don’t know who I can tell about it. I normally wouldn’t put this pressure on you, but… I just don’t know what to do.”

The boy had woken up that morning well-rested and a little complacent. It was only an hour after he had woken up, when he was still up reading the news and sipping at french roast, that he got the text from his childhood friend saying she was raped. In a few ways, he anticipated it – he never liked her boyfriend, and made it clear to at any point he could. The three used to go out, along with a group of separate friends, but the feud between the boy and the boyfriend continued to such an extreme that it was clear one of them had to be removed from the outing. The girl chose to bring her boyfriend.

In a vain and abhorrent way, he even wanted it to happen – not out of any sort of vain jealousy, but based on the fact that as the years went on the boy and the girl’s relationship began to dwindle from the peak it had reached during four years before. They say that the ultimate test of a friendship is its length, but the boy would tell you otherwise – it seemed that the longer things went the more distant the two became. He needed something to bring her back to him, and for them to rekindle their friendship. He believed that an incident of this proportion could have her consoling him first, and as it turned out, he was right. He quickly texted back, telling her to come to the roof of the Best Inn alone that night. Hours passed, and here they were.

“I know it hurts,” He replied back, never making eye contact. “I tried, but… I couldn’t figure out any useful advice to give you. I just want you to know that… I’m here for you. I really am.”

“I should have listened to you,” she kept in her tears, “I never should have done that to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Now his eyes diverted, and he began to look at her figure. Her head was tilted down, and her eyes were shrouded by long black hair, that seemed to hide her emotions and describe them at the same time. “No, don’t. Don’t bother being sorry. The last thing you need to feel right now is guilt. None of this… none of it was your fault.” Rain began to fall, but only sprinklets. A car alarm went off somewhere in the northeast. “Maybe… maybe you could talk to your mother about it. She’d help you.”

The girl used her free arm to rest her chin on. “She really liked him. Plus, you know, my relationship with her hasn’t been the best. Not anymore.”

“So? She has unconditional positive regard for you, you know she does. All mothers do.”

“Unconditional positive regard is bullshit. You know that.” A tear streamed down her face, but under the shroud the boy could not see it.

The boy didn’t have any reply after that. He had spent so much time hyping up this moment for himself, and now there was nothing. What could he say? What was there to say? At some point the rain began to fall just a bit harder, hard enough that both of them, who had worn jackets due to the cold weather, put their hoodies up to stop the pit-pattering of the rain from getting on them. A useless exercise, to a certain extent. But after all – what now?

Finally, the boy spoke back up.

“I guess… since you trusted this whole thing with me, maybe this would be the good time to tell the secret I kept from you, wouldn’t it? To make things fair.”

She looked over at him, faint curiosity glowing from her eyes yet suffocated by her traumatized indifference. Thought she looked him in the eyes, he could not tell she had been crying. Rain and tears look the same. He continued anyway.

“I already told you I had social anxiety. You know that. Hell, everyone knows that. But, back then... they told me something else in the diagnosis. They wanted to address my apathy, since that’s not common among people with social phobia… and he told me – they told me – that I also was antisocial. They called me a medically-defined psychopath.”

She looked at him like she wasn’t even surprised. He went on.

“They told me I had to get special treatment for that… that I had to go to a facility to get help. I knew what they meant by that, so I ran. I told them that I needed to go to the bathroom, and just walked out of there. They tried to contact me on my phone, but I blocked the number. I mean… what else was I going to do? I knew I was different, I could just never pinpoint it. I told you that countless times. And yet that whole thing was such a long time ago, but I can’t help thinking about how… how it…”

He looked out upon city lights and sounds off in the distance. The hotel roof was far from the downtown center, yet the faint dim of activity still held its place within the symptoms. After taking a brie moment of contemplation, the boy’s story reached its finale.

“It makes sense. All of it. That’s the real reason I’ve had so much trouble with others. Why I’ve had so much trouble with you, and with your friends, and with… with everyone. I was thinking, a couple of nights ago, back about Bluesnake Lake… and I can honestly say I’ve never really felt that about anyone else. That… level of compassion. I’ve always hated everyone. Just hate. Hate, hate, hate. But that was never the same with you. That’s why I’ve known you for so long, and we’ve been friends for… That’s, I mean, that’s it.”

He looked on the face of his companion for some sort of equally passionate reply, but there was none. At some point her hand had slipped out of his and she began to thumb nervously in her lap. She looked down below to the floor of the hotel, where during this speech a Latino man had begun to sweep up some beer vomit from the parking lot. But make no mistake – she had listened. She heard everything.

“Well?” The boy asked, masking the desperate strain he felt. The girl finally spoke up.

“Well, what?”

“Well, I mean, don’t you have something to say?” The boy accidentally choked, and it became apparent his tone was out of frustration, even though he meant to hide it like so many times before.

“I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“I just want to hear… what you felt. I want to know your reaction. I don’t care what it is, I just… want something. Anything. Please.”

But she didn’t respond.

“You… you remember Bluesnake Lake, right?”

No response.

“You do, don’t you? Late during the night I’d leave my cabin with the guys and sneak into yours. We’d hide under the covers and just… read. We had to keep our voices down, and I remember… I remember we almost got caught because we were laughing so hard, and one of the aides came by the hall to see what the hell was going on. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life-” he laughed “-and it seemed like one of yours too. Anyway, we’d do that for an hour or so, then I’d get back up and sneak back to my cabin. But on the last night, one of us had the idea – I think it was you – to go down to the docks to watch the stars. But the docks were closed, so we just went to the shore instead. We slept together on the shore that night. I woke up that morning and you had your head on my chest, and I had my arm around you, and I realized for the first time… for the first time ever… that I didn’t have any regrets about our friendship anymore. I didn’t regret always knowing you but never quite getting anywhere with it. I didn’t regret the fact you always seemed to choose other friends over me. I didn’t regret the fact that in middle school I fell in love with you but you were busy with other guys. Everything just felt… felt right. And I felt at peace.”

Of course she remembered Bluesnake Lake. But she didn’t feel the same way. She did remember it… and in a lot of ways she did look back fondly on the experience… but none of that meant anything anymore. Because now the girl had understood the real reason he responded to her text that morning.

So that’s why when he asked if she remembered any of it, she shook her head, and his heart was broken.

“Fine. I just…” The boy now didn’t bother hiding his frustration with the girl. Tears merged with the rain, for both of them. “...I just, just, whatever. I don’t… Fine. I don’t have anything else to say. I’m sorry. I don’t. I… hope you feel better.”

He got up and went back down the service stairway, and the girl was alone again. Under her breath, she mentioned something harshly about men – “They’re all the same.” But it wasn’t men she was thinking about.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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Old World Blues

There’s a saying back from where I’m from – Old World Blues.

It’s used to describe a person who’s so stuck within the past that they can’t seem to see through anything else. I remember that’s what I was thinking about that summer morning. The Old World Blues.

I opened up the shop early, not out of necessity or desire but simply out of convenience. When I drove down that morning I had just happen to arrive a few minutes early, and instead of waiting it out I felt I should just open it up instead.

Private detective work doesn’t get too many customers – at least not on a daily basis. Standard investigations usually last two to three months, padded by small moments of hiatus in between. This was one of them. My last investigation – with which I can’t recall the details of – had ended a few days before. Now, I sat, waiting, thinking about those Old World Blues.

It was two minutes before the office usually opened that I heard a knock. The sound scared me, because I had grown so accustomed to later day calls – not early morning visits – that I forgot about the possibility. I had expected it to be some delivery man ready to give me a package that had been coming a few days late. What I ended up getting wasn’t that at all.

The woman at the other end of the door was clearly in some mix of distress and depression. I thought her to be on the older side, though that could’ve just been due to the stress in her eyes. It was clear that she didn’t choose me first – she had seen a couple of other agencies and all of them had declined. I’ve seen that look of desperation before. It worried me – most of the time when I’m not the first call it’s because they asked for too much, which is usually much more than I myself can handle. And yet the woman had a sort of urgency to her, and urgency that lead me to want to at least humor her in case.

“You’re here a bit early.” I told her, pointing to the Business Hours sign out front.

“Oh, I’m sorry… It looked like the lights were on.”

“Well they’re certainly on now,” I beckoned her, “Come on in.”

Either of us had barely gotten seated when she began her story. From the beige letter bag she had at her side she pulled out a folder, slightly worn, with the slightest dab of a coffee stain on its front center and filled to the brim with what I could only assume she was about to tell me.

“Listen, I’ve contacted a lot of place about this, but… My daughter is missing – she has been for a long time, you see – And I just-”

“Cold case?”

She stuttered. “W-what?”

“Has the official investigation ceased?”

“I mean, yes, but-”

“Sorry, I don’t follow through with cold cases.”

Already I could see her frustration boiling back up once more. She knew exactly what I meant – she had heard it many times before. But she was hoping I wouldn’t have said the same. Now, I did; and she came back to that ever present state. “What? Why?”

I got out my cigarette holder from amongst a pile of old scans, pulling out a very specific card – the only yellow one in the bunch, an old aged Japanese Musumi. They had always given me an age in heated negotiations. And so I lit it.“They’re dead ends. Nothing anyone can do about it. That’s just the painful truth.”

“Could you just… just listen to what I have to say? Please?”

The Musumi always works. Always did work, I should say… but Old World Blues was still on the mind. I struggled to resist the force that had already overtaken me. Following her up, giving her more hope – it was a mistake. But I couldn’t help it. The air was too thick with the scent of cigarette smoke and mystery. I had thought about my own life… the own mysteries I had experienced, as well as the closures I hadn’t. I decided it was time to break the rules.

“Alright, give me the foundations.”

Her eyes perked up. She was never able to convince anyone else. She began: “We were on a trip… we stopped, at a hotel not too far from here, just the two of us. There wasn’t anyone else there, not from what I could see. We got our room together, got ready and went to bed. Last thing I said to her before I dozed off… she was playing with her tablet, and I told her to get to bed or else she’d be tired in the morning. She nodded to me, and I turned and fell asleep. The next morning...”

“She was gone?”

“Yes. Out of nowhere. Tablet and everything was still there. The bed looked fine too… looked like she had just gotten out of bed and never came back.” The nameless woman began to quiver to herself under the recalling of events passed.

“Did you not hear anything during the night? Like her getting out of bed, anything?”

“I heard the bed ricket – her getting out of bed, I think – but nothing else.” The guilt that weighed her down was clear. I felt a tinge of sympathy; but I had seen and heard of many worse cases before, and my empathetic thought had been sanded down by so many years of hearing the same dreadful things over and over again.

“Did you hear the door open or close?”

“No. I heard nothing.”

“And what did the official investigation come up with?”

“That she must have wandered off during the night, or worse… someone got her. I… I just want to see my daughter again, that’s all.” I could feel the mood dampening even lower. She began to shed a tear.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Not… not long. Almost exactly five days since.”

I thought about it. I thought about the case, and about the mother, and about her missing daughter. I’ve been brought people wanting closure before. Even I myself have felt the pain of not knowing the end of a story. Perhaps that was what brought me into thinking about the Old World Blues that morning in the first place. It was either luck or fate for that women, for in the first time of my entire investigative career, I sat down and decided to accept a cold case request.

“Oh, thank you sir! Thank you so much.”

I shrugged it off, pretending it had less meaning to me than it actually did. “Don’t mention it. I’ll get on it soon.”

I watched her slowly leave her seat, leaving some trepidation behind her, and move silently towards the exit. But right before she turned the brass knob, I recalled one case that I could get closure to.

“What is your name?”

She turned back to me, her panicked hair created a shadow that guised true meaning in her face. “Maria. Maria Cartwell. My daughter’s name is Susie Cartwell.”

No one else came that entire day. No one else needed to. I grabbed the stained portfolio she had left on my desk and flipped it open. It turned out to be a mistake, for the first thing I laid eyes upon was Susie’s smiling face. A smiling face that, perhaps at the time, was meant to have joyful meaning. Meant to be relaxing and peaceful, to calm one that was feeling particularly neurotic. But the context had changed now. For what I now saw in the young daughter’s face now was a beckoning. A plea. Save my mother, she told me. Save my mother, for I am already dead. But if you cannot save her… then at the very least, go and save yourself.

[END OF EPISODE 1]

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
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The Big Bear Screams Again

When I moved into my apartment in Queens I had a lot of complaints but didn't have a chance to share them. After all, my life at that point had fallen to one of its greatest deeps, and money didn't come to me easily. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy things about the place wasn't the smell of rat piss that diffused through the halls on a near constant basis, or the lack of communication between the ethnic landlord and his audience of tenants, or even the fact that the lock on my door simply held as a ruse and not an actual lock for the first three months of living. No, the biggest, perhaps most important aspect of that apartment, was the walls.

It's not uncommon for a tenant to hate the walls. Every wall is paper thin to everyone, unless you're living in some expensive condominium down with the bourgeoisie. But you'll have to trust me when I say that these walls were a very special case. Privacy was already very sparse in 1963, but when it came to the apartments, community was everything. I say that speaking of nearly every single sound-wave passing through your side could very well be audible on the other. Every day, at 3 pm, I could hear Robert's boys coming home from their classes in the ghetto and turning on the TV to watch some early sitcom I couldn't be arsed to recall the name of. But it wasn't the Robert and his boys I was thinking the most about, but rather the man who stayed in the room opposite to where I held my own bed; the man I knew only as Leubeto.

I didn't know Leubeto was a communist at first. There was nothing about the guy that really struck me as strange; he looked like the same kind of muscular, straight out of the navy, first-rate thug you'd expect to live in these types of places. Occasionally when I'd get home from work I'd see him having a smoke right outside – he'd give me a small nod and I'd give a small nod back – and that was about the extent of our direct acknowledgment of one another. And yet, every Friday night – every Friday night – Leubeto would bring a whore from the shack down at Wilhelm Pier with him, and I'll be damned if I didn't hear every god damn piece of it.

Listening to Leubeto fuck a woman was like listening to a cheap public school symphony. First came the introduction; Leubeto would bad mouth the girl and she would bad mouth back, and then as the clothes came out the language would get more and more filthy to the point where things were finally ready to get heated. From there was when things really began to escalate, but not for very long. It's strange, from a man with the strength and sexual determinacy of Leubeto I would have expected him to last longer, but every time I predicted his breaking point it would always be a little bit before. Perhaps it was because I always had the habit of overestimating Leubeto, but I digress.

As you could tell, this was a bad fuckin' time of day for me. My time in Korea taught me to sleep under hard circumstances, and Leubeto wouldn't last that long anyway, but for that simple five minute period I swear it was a hell of a lot louder than it needed to be. Still, I am a patient man by heart, and so I preserved until a Wednesday night where I had brought my own love over, and right as we were ready to begin, Leubeto's horrifying grunts permeated the room. Turns out he had decided to change schedule on me. It was then that I decided action must be taken.

The first thing I wanted to figure out was what in the hell the big fuck was even doing in there. I obviously couldn't just ask him – and if he caught me watching in the act I might have already been dead. So instead what I devised was an ingenious – if a bit perverse – plan. I figured that Hashraj wouldn't mind if his already deteriorating complex was deteriorated just a tiny bit more, so I took the liberty of constructing a very small and precise that gave a very nice birds eye view of Leubeto's eloquent bedroom. In that case, even if he had discovered the hole, it was easy for me to conclude that it must have been done by a previous inhabitant, and that I myself did not even know who put the hole there or what its purpose served.

I clearly remember the day the plan first came into fruition. It was winter, heavily snowing – must have been early December – and I had been able to get off work early claiming I was suffering from the same stomach bug that a few other employees had been getting. I ended up not getting any pay that week, but it was worth it; I watched through the looking glass down anxiously as Leubeto finally brought in his escort, and they immediately went to town.

I was holding in my laughter and having an existential crisis at the same time. I often wonder what I look like to other people; when I saw Leubeto that night the thought transformed itself to some twisted reality. For the Leubeto I had known – the one who seemed like he can pulverize anyone else in the hall to a pulp, the man of few words but many intimidations – if you told me that man was the same one as the red-faced, lumping, intensely sweaty and slightly emotional man I had seen in the bedroom that night, and you were to say that with no connection between the two bodies like I had, then I would be right to not believe you, as I probably wouldn't. And yet, things came to the head they did, and now my seemingly miserable life had at least one positive – the self-fulfilled enjoyment of a nice Friday night.

…

“You're telling me he's a fuckin' communist?”

“I understand this may come at a great surprise to you, but you must believe me in what I say. In every word. I have already given you the proof; and now I am asking you to step up and help your country one more time.”

“I mean, it's not that I'm going to decline the invitation or anything, it's just – what the hell is he spying on? The lame duck couriers down at the pier? Little Ol' Hashraj? Is he spying on his own ballsack?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what we believe he's done. All we can tell you is what we want you to do; go to that little hole you made in the wall and plant this camera there.”

It was a whole three months that had passed when I found the FBI agent at my door. I had been carrying some groceries up when I found him in all his black suited glory, beckoning to me, explaining the situation briefly but offering to explain it in depth over some coffee at a place in the uptown. Being both scared and starving, how could I refuse? I put down the bags inside and then went straight back out to meet him down at his car – a terrible idea in retrospect – but he did keep his end of the bargain and I ended up getting a damn good coffee out of it. I don't recall the entire exact dialogue, but I do remember the key points; so that bit of fictionalized discussion should set up my situation pretty well for you.

The Friday was the first Friday since December since I felt as jittery as I did, although now it was for all the wrong reasons. It turns out my casual fun had attracted quite the pair of wolves, and seeing that I was now between pissing off the KGB and pissing off the CIA, I decided to score one for the true motherland. And so, while Leubeto gave his classic rhythmic thumping, I took the liberty of setting up the camera exactly as I had been instructed.

After that, truth be told, not much else happened. I waited nervously another three and a half weeks before the feds finally busted down Leubeto's door, probably due to the fact that they had enough evidence of whatever the fuck they wanted to know. And then, things went silent. Life moved on. To be honest sometimes I wonder why I treat it so much more than a funny anecdote in a much greater life. I tell this story at parties a lot and it does a lot of good. I figured I'd write it down too.

Leubeto, if you're still out there – sincerest apologies.

Saturn Devouring his Son

The reason is because the painting was hung up right inside Richard's office. It wasn't the actual piece of course, though if he really wished it he could easily procure the money to obtain the original. Still, he liked the picture. Really liked it. Where all others obtained a sense of fear and anxiety from it, Mr. Richard felt calmed. By intimidating the others who entered the room it aided him. He prayed it would aid him tonight.

There was the expected knock. Richard opened it an out came the expected son. The two of them sat down across from each other on Richard's old mahogany table. The following conversation occurred:

“My son.”

“My father.”

A short period of silence.

“So you know why I'm here, correct?”

The father didn't answer.

“You know why I'm here, correct?”

“I have the idea.”

“I... I... I, listen, I talked about it to Marilyn. In full detail. Now I'm not saying you're lying to me, but you should-”

“I know exactly why you're here. There, I said it. I know exactly why you're here.”

“I'm of age now.”

“Yes.”

“I am the eldest.”

“Yes.”

“So, I am wishing to make the transaction now. To make it easier for us both, down the road.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“This isn't a negotiation father. This isn't a deal – hell, it isn't even a wager. This is set in stone. You promised me this a long time ago, and I've come to take-”

“I'm not giving it to you.”

“So you're going back on promise?”

“That's not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about? 'Cause I'm beginning to have a hard time-”

“When I wrote your inheritance, I declared that I would only give you it if I knew for sure you were going to be something worthwhile and do something successful with it.”

“Oh, god, please. Don't go down this route. Don't do this.”

“At the time, it seemed like nothing. Of course you were going to get the money. That's why I was so hopeful about it, that's why, at the time, it may have seemed like a promise to you-”

“It was a promise.”

“It was a promise that you'd get it if you followed the conditions. Now, I was certain you were going to be successful, but... do you even remember how I became who I am-”

“Even? What's that supposed to mean?”

“Do you know who I am? I am a deal maker. I have gotten schinded by a lot of people who I otherwise thought were really great business partners. I know how to make contracts. I've been doing this for fourty years. Fourty fucking years. I made my clam business when I was a little fuckin' hoodwink Albanian immigrant in the middle of chink town.”

“It wasn't even a business...”

“Oh, huh? Really? It wasn't? You say that like you've got some authority. Please, please – if you – if you at all have any expertise in business, or entrepreneurship, or … hell, I'll allow anything. Anything at all. Listen all your fucking accomplishments out, right here. Just spell them out to me.”

“I wrote a book.”

“No you didn't. No you fucking didn't. You didn't write shit. You said you were going to write a book and you didn't write shit. Waste of fucking talent.”

“I did write- no, now hold on. Don't you speak like that to me.”

“What? What? You're my son, not the other way around. I can say what I-”

“Don't. Speak.”

“Haha, what? Whatya fuckin' doing? Are you threatening me right now?”

“I made my own fucking fortune without you. I lived my own god damn life without you. While you were busy fuckin' two-cent Bolivian daddy's girls twenty years younger than you who probably felt like having your ancient wood was worse than rape but they did it for the money... while you were doing that... I was establishing a community. I have a fuckin' community of people coming after me, looking after me, caring about what I say, because I wrote that book. What, what you think someone cares about what you have to say? Like actually, genuinely cares? The fuckin' shareholders are just dealing with your shit by this point because they can't force you to resign since you're the piece of stubborn shit you are. And don't even get me started... don't even get me started on Tony and Lewis... ha ha, if you think Tony and Lewis like you, then you really are fuckin' delusional.”

“Well I'm certainly sure that Lewis has done a lot more in his short life than you have in your miserable one.”

“Miserable? Oh no, my life isn't miserable. It's just when I have to talk to you. When I have to talk to you it feels like Hell has invaded the land of the living.”

“I... can't... do this, not right now. Fuck this, I'm getting a drink.”

“How does it feel?”

“I said I'm getting a drink.”

“Don't walk away from me, I'm not done until I have my money.”

“I'm only walking to the alcohol cabinet, calm the fuck down.”

A short silence.

“Alright, alright. Listen, we can make a deal.”

“Yes, we can make a deal. You give me all the money I deserve.”

“No.”

“Fuck you.”

“I am not giving you one point five million dollars. But I'm willing to go a bit lower than that.”

“Oh, so when I first walk in you're adamant that you're not giving shit. Then I knock you down a few pegs and you say you're willing to negotiate?”

“I'm giving you a fair deal, don't talk shit.”

“Yes, and my fair deal is the million. The one that is owed to me. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then we don't have a deal.”

A quick silence.

“Jesus, the fuck are you-”

“Listen. Listen to me. I am done playing around, alright? You come – look at me – look here, at me – I am done with the fucking deals. I am done with you. I am not standing here all damn... LOOK at me.”

“Good fucking Christ, were you trying to hit me? Calm the fuck-- AH GOD, JESUS.”

Silence.

More silence.

The door is shut.

Heavy breathing.

“What have I done.”

The painting is taken down.

Some minor scuffling.

A vault is opened.

“For the better.”

The door is opened.

The door is closed.

Last Stand of Buckweed Ranch

Let me tell you now the tragic tale of Buckweed Ranch.

Back in Texas, during the Great Depression, there was a wave of crises that involved landlords going to the farmer's home in order to evict them from the property in the fear that they could no longer produce profit. This caused a wave of terror among the farmers themselves, calling for the government to amend these so called discriminatory violations and be able to stay in the place they raised their families. And yet, despite all this anger and fear that developed out of these unplanned evictions, all of the families ended up leaving – begrudgingly or no. All of them, except Walter Forsen.

Walter had always been the stubborn type. Ever since he was born he had lived on that Ranch, he had a strong devotion to it. As men and their families began to be evicted, Walter had barely batted an eye. Even Lando Holmes, the owner of the ranch and lifelong friend of the Forsens, begged Walter to leave early, offering him large sums of money to go live in a more stable area. He told Walter that it wasn't him, but the banks that were throwing Walter off. Walter didn't listen.

At it was in February of 1932 that Lando himself was finally forced to come down to the ranch with a tractor and force Walter off the land. He got all the way up to the door and prepared to knock when Walter opened the door himself.

From the beginning the last Forsen's disposition seemed incredibly odd. Whereas he had been sending Lando crude and hateful replies to his letters from that point on, at the door the man seemed eager to see him and completely oblivious of what was about to happen. He welcomed Lando in, told him to sit at the kitchen table, and then wait while Walter went to go finish something up. The way Lando sat at that kitchen table meant he was facing the windows of the kitchen with the door behind him – meaning he was completely ignorant when Walter fired the two shots from his revolver straight into the back of his head.

They say Lando didn't die at first, but rather fell off the chair and began convulsing on the floor for a few moments before his official death finally came. It didn't matter to Walter. The man he had once called a friend was now a significant threat that needed to be eliminated. As all men know, property is valued more than friends.

It didn't take the police too long to gather what had happened to Lando. They had warned Lando of Forsen's speech before, when he had first began sending the letters. Lando, in his ignorance, refused to believe them. He believed that he was the only man who could convince Walter to leave that place. Now, everyone knew no one could.

They send the entire Alberton county police department to that farm. The cop cars were perfectly lined up around the perimeter so there was no escape. They wanted to bait him out, so they waited. Waited until the man himself finally appeared at the second story balcony.

He was only able to shoot the rifle once before a flurry of bullets decimated his body. The one shot was actually quite interesting; the bullet was a long way off from hitting any of the policeman. This is the shot where the story tends to differ. Some say Walter Forsen was just a bad shot. Some say that the rifle he was using was old and worn out, and so the bullets trajectory was much different than Walter probably anticipated. Others say that he wasn't trying to hit the police at all, but rather for they to hit him.

Buckweed Ranch never had an occupant since. The Depression wore it out, and its newly found dark history destroyed it. Some men in Alberton county believe that's what Walter wanted – for it only to ever be a Forsen ranch. To some men in the county, Walter is a pioneering hero. To others, he is the ultimate fear, and the ultimate villain.

Montague Family House

And so he lay, writhing on the floor.

The daughter could barely comprehend what had transpired. She knew she walked in with the boy a few moments before – that the two of them were laughing all the way up the stairs to the family house. She knew that, once she had open the door, her father had been waiting. She knew that her father said something, but wasn't exactly sure what it was. And now the father held the pistol in his right hand; and there lay her partner, writhing on the floor.

She screamed. It was her first instinct. Her second was to run to the phone to call the police. Her father held her back, trying to get her to stay calm. She slapped him, and while he was dazed ran for the phone anyway. She had barely gotten on the line with the responder when her father pulled the cord on the phone and ended the call. All this time, the daughter's boyfriend lay lying, writhing on the floor.

Now a vengeful fury built up in her. She pushed the father away, calling him terrible things at the top of her lungs. Perhaps he deserved it, perhaps not. After all, none of us know exactly why he shot the boy. Not even the daughter knows why. All we know is that he stays laying, writing on the bloody floor.

It was at this point that the daughter had given up all hope. She, much like the boy, collapsed to the ground, crying in a neat corner of the room. Her father did not bother counseling her. Instead, he looked toward the cause of this commotion; the boy, who no longer was writing, but lay motionless. Motionless on the bloody floor.

Fat Man, Little Boy

When I first got across the street, I didn't quite understand what I was looking at. There was a grand group of people all surrounding a small little pocket of shadowed area on a sidewalk. Two bikes had been discarded nearby. An older man ran across to a cul-de-sac right around the corner. In all honesty I don't like moments like these getting to me – whenever there's a moment that draws peoples attention I always look away. Keeps me more focused than those around me. Yet this time I couldn't help but be curious. I figured I might as well check it out; I had to go down that path eventually.

As I got closer the figures which I had only been vaguely able to discern became more and more clear. All these people, for which there must have been seven, were all surrounding one boy. The boy was only slightly younger than I was, with much more fat. One of the men handed him water. He took it silently. They asked him questions, but he said nothing.

But perhaps the most interesting feature about the boy was the blood peppered across his body. It wasn't streaming, or dripping, or falling. It was merely there. In the time I looked at the kid, although brief, I couldn't find any source to where the blood came from. In fact, it some ways it even looked fake. The blood had mixed with the sweet and became much lighter, giving off the impression of a used marker rather than blood. Hell, the only reason I did know it was blood was because the group had mentioned it so.

I didn't get that long of a chance to look at the boy. The second I took a peek his eyes instantly found me, even with all the others around. They looked, expectantly. What they were expecting, I never found out. I continued on my way.

A few days passed before I saw him again. The crowd of people were no longer there. He was still laying down under the shade of the same tree. The blood was now gone. I took another brief glance at him. Part of me was tempted to ask him what had happened but I never did, reason being is that he gave me the same eyes he did during our previous meeting. Expectant eyes. He wanted something from me, something I wasn't giving him.

After that second meeting I became fully engrossed in the boy. What did he want? Was it something only I could give him? I tried thinking of someone he might have reminded me of, but came up with nothing. I searched around campus for him but the trip turned fruitless. I asked a close friend if she had heard of any accident that happened on that street recently. She shook her head.

Those next few days I went across that street fully wishing to see the kid again, to ask him what I had not gained the courage to ask before, but it was to no avail. It was only after, when I had begun to become frustrated, when I began to doubt myself, when I had forgotten about the fat boy entirely, that I saw him again.

My initial reaction was anger. Was he taunting me? Did he in some way know that I was looking for him and plan accordingly? I got right up to his face. He gave me expectant eyes. I didn't bother wasting any time.

“Do I know you?”

No answer, though for the first time he did look away, trailing off towards something in the distance before looking back up to me. I knew he wasn't deaf. He could hear me.

“Why do you keep showing up here?”

Once again there was no response, but the focused look on his face began to fade. Whatever I was saying, it was weakening him. I decided to go deeper.

“What happened to you last week? When you were bleeding?”

Then, he stopped looking. Just stared off into the distance. Into nothing. I asked a few more questions. Repeated some others. Now, nothing changed. He just stared. I started getting angry again.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The answer was nothing. It was the answer I expected, but not the one I wanted. I got closer to his face. He didn't react. I could feel myself rising in fury but I didn't want to do anything. So I left. I didn't want to leave, but I had no other choice. I took a long look behind me and he was still there. Hadn't changed position at all. I stopped turning around by the time I had reached the next block and just kept going.

I never saw him again.

It was only a few years later that I finally found out what was the deal with the little boy. It turns out, unlike what I thought, he didn't suffer from an accident. Rather, he came home to his father – a father who had a history of being particularly violent. The two had an argument, and the father hit him until he was unconscious. They say the father spoke These will make sure you don't talk again when he used the scissors to snip out the boy's tongue. They say the father only realized what he did when the tongue continued to move and slip within his hand, as if controlled by an act of God. They say it was the tongue, not the boy, not the argument, and not his life, that made him kill himself not long after. They say that ever since his father's death the boy, at some hour of the day, will go sit down by the shade of the shadow of that tree and just wait. Occasionally someone will come back and he would just stare at them. Stare at them expectantly. No one could ever really find out what the boy was after. Perhaps he was looking for someone to love him. Or perhaps someone to blame. Perhaps he wasn't looking for anything at all, he just sacrificed his own life to become an observer in our world, looking up at us expectantly to make some sort of move. Or perhaps, perhaps he was looking for someone to finish the job.