“I ain’t say partner,” he shot back quickly. “I said I want my cut. That’s fair.”
“Fair?” I let out a short laugh while shaking my head. “What’s fair is that you’re still breathing after making a threat earlier.”
That made him pause, just for a second. But it wasn’t enough. This truly wasn’t the same nigga that I thought I had known.
“You’re trying to scare me,” he said as he squared up a little. “I’m not one of them scared little niggas no more. I’m not about to back down because you pulled up with a gun.”
He moved before I could finish a thought. His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. He was trying to push the gun away, and just like that, we crashed into each other. Our bodies slammed into the wall as we fought for control. We were literally fighting over the gun, and it was caught between us in a way that made everything unpredictable.
“Man, you are tripping!” I barked while trying to twist free.
“Give me that!” he grunted as he gripped my wrist tighter.
Adrenaline had to push him harder than I expected. I was bigger than him in every shape and form, yet he was getting the best of me. We stumbled back into the living room and started knocking into furniture. Our feet were sliding as we struggled. Neither one of us wanted to let go. I could tell that by the look in his eye that if he got a good hold of my gun, he would indeed shoot me with it. The gun shifted, turned, pressed between us, and then it went off. The sound was loud enough to stop everything. My ears were ringing in the small space. His grip loosened as his body jerked and then went still. And then… he dropped.
For a second, I just stood there, breathing heavily while staring down at him like my mind was trying to catch up to what just happened. This wasn’t the plan. I came to scare him. Suddenly, a small cry cut through the silence. It was soft, and the tone was shaky, like whoever it came from was hurt. I turned my head toward the hallway, and that’s when I saw her. A little girl stood there with the fastener to her little dirty onesie undone. She had to be no more than two years old. A lump formed in my throat as I saw her standing there with tears running down her face. Her tear-filled eyes went from looking at me to looking at him. She looked just like Bashar.
They had the same eyes and the same face. My chest tightened for a split second before I pushed it down. She startedcrying louder and calling out to him.Dada… Dada…I could tell that she was not understanding why he wasn’t getting up.
“Damn…” I muttered while dragging a hand over my face.
I moved quickly after that. Bashar didn’t live in the best neighborhood, so I’m sure that the police would drag their ass with responding to the sound of the gun. That’s if anyone even reported it. I had to move swiftly. I checked the rest of the house out of instinct. All the rooms, corners, and even under the beds. I had to make sure nobody else was there.
It was just them. I didn’t know what to do with her, but I knew one thing for sure: she couldn’t come with me. Her cries followed me out. This wasn’t something I could fix. I made my way to the door, opened it, and stepped out without looking back. I pulled the door shut behind me as her cries echoed in my ears. I had made it outside with all the air in the world to breathe, yet I felt like I couldn’t take a steady breath. Being out of that house didn’t change anything.
Chapter 11
Ghost
By the time I made it back to the apartment, my hands were still tight on the steering wheel, and my mind was moving faster than the car ever could. I didn’t remember half the turns I took getting here. I didn’t even register the lights, the streets, or the people I passed. Everything felt blurred, like my body was on autopilot and my mind was stuck somewhere I couldn’t fully reach. The only thing I knew was that I needed to get inside.
I parked crooked and barely cut the engine before I got out of the car and moved fast up the steps. My head was on a swivel as I made it to the door. The regular, everyday shit surrounded me, yet I was nervous. My keys fumbled in my hand before I finally got the door open. The second I stepped inside, I didn’t stop. Didn’t say anything. I didn’t even open my mouth. I just went straight for the bathroom and slammed the door behind me hard enough to shake the walls.
From the other side, I heard Trigga’s voice with this humorous tone.
“Damn, you ran in here like that… what, you gotta take a shit or something?”
Under any other circumstance, I probably would’ve said something back. I probably would have opened the door and thrown something at him. But I couldn’t. Because nothing about me felt normal right now. I braced both hands against the sink. My head was hanging low, causing my locs to drop down in my face as I tried to catch my breath, but it wouldn’t come easily. My chest was rising too fast with air, dragging in like it wasn’t enough, like something inside me was still running even though I had already stopped moving.
I lifted my head slowly and looked in the mirror. And for a second… I didn’t recognize myself. My eyes looked different. My natural almond form looked wider and unsettled. I dragged a hand over my face, then again, harder this time, like I was trying to wake myself up. I was trying to snap out of whatever this feeling was that was creeping up on me.
“Get it together,” I muttered at my reflection.
But then I saw it, and my eyes squinted at the sight. It was blood. Faint at first, then clearer the longer I looked. It was on my shirt and on my hands. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. And just like that, something in my chest shifted because the reality of what I had done was now on me. I could see the shit.
My breathing picked up again. Breaths came out in uneven spurts as I stared at the blood. My mind was trying to process what I was looking at, while something else started pushing forward from a place I didn’t even realize was still there. A place that my mind must have had under lock and key. A memory that was clear, loud, and uninvited…
I was small again. I had to be seven, maybe, and I was lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling while voices carried through the walls. They were louder than they were supposed to be. I remember the way it made my chest feel tight even back then,the way I tried to ignore it at first. I tried pulling the covers up over my head like that would block it out. But it didn’t.
The arguing got worse. My mom’s voice was sharp and strained. I barely ever heard her raise her voice. So, this was alarming. A man’s voice was angrier and heavier. He held so much bass that at my young age, it felt like he was shaking the walls just with his words. I slid out of bed slowly, my feet hit the floor carefully, like I knew I wasn’t supposed to be up. And that’s because I wasn’t. I started creeping toward the door. I moved lightly on my feet to make sure that I wasn’t heard. I pulled it open just enough to peek out into the hallway. That’s when I saw it.
My mother was backed up near the wall in the living room. Her face looked tense, and her hands were up like she was trying to hold distance between her and him. The man was standing over her. He was bigger, louder, and his presence filled the space in a way that didn’t feel safe. I was scared for her. I was scared for myself.
“If you can have your cake and eat it too, so can I. I’m sick of you…” Her voice trailed off when his hand moved.
It was fast. Too fast. Like, if I blinked, I probably would have missed it. The sound of his baseball mitt-shaped hand hitting her echoed in a way I never forgot, even if I thought I did. She stumbled, and my body froze in the doorway. My small hands gripped the frame like I didn’t know whether to run, scream, or disappear completely.
He didn’t stop. He kept going. Even when she fell to the floor, he let his feet pick up where his hands had left off. Anger spilled out of him with nothing to hold it back. And I just stood there, just watching in horror as I began to feel something build in my chest that I didn’t have words for back then. Other kids had a monster under their bed or in their closets, but not me. Ihad whoever the fuck this was. Right when I was about to open my mouth to scream, the front door burst open.
