The West Coast Delegation

[Adam_Ottone]

 

Ten minutes out of town on Route 70, past the tourist attractions and suburban hell, civilization as you know it gives you a smile and a pat on the shoulder and then leaves you by your lonesome, like a whore whose half-hour is up. The lights around the highway dim out and disappear, one by one, like someone forgot to pay the electric bill. You drive a little too fast or a little too slow, and then the last moving car you could see winks out too. The world turns dark.

 

The world was dark and I was in it. To make it worse, it was raining cats and dogs, but at least I wasn't the one driving. Mickey had the wheel. We'd see a sign along the road every now and then, but they all just confirmed what I already knew. Forty-five minutes to Jimmy's new place in the next town over.

 

"Slim" Jim was a semi-retired street guy from Johnny's checkered past. What did old Jimmy call his joint? The Fluff House. Because of the local porn actresses that he hired on as "staff". It was either that, or Fluffers. Get it?

 

"This should go without saying, but I'm gonna say it anyway," Johnny grumbled. He paused and then lifted a finger.

 

"What?" I asked, helpful as always. I coughed to clear my throat and sinuses.

 

"Don't tell Sarah about this."

 

"She's probably happy to have your stinking carcass out of her bed for one night, John," Mickey quipped. He was a sunburnt freckle-faced fuck with auburn hair, always making bad jokes. Johnny's brother-in-law and - you guessed it - Sarah's brother.

 

"Yeah, don't do that, Mickey. We're not that kind of friends," Johnny warned, with finality in his tone. He was in one of his moods, working a cigar like a chew toy between his teeth. He had a face like a bulldog and a temper to match. I held my breath for a long moment, my eyes darting between the two of them, but the other shoe did not drop.

 

We drove the rest of the way mostly in silence, with only the sound of rain pitter-pattering against the windows. I could hardly breathe in the back of Mickey's Ford Taurus. Mickey was driving. Johnny was in the shotgun seat. They were both smoking like chimneys and couldn't be bothered to wind down the windows much, on account of the weather.

 

The cigars were little cheap ones, infused with alcohol. Peach cobbler cognac, I think it was. Smelled something awful. Mickey had found the cigars in Sally's leather jacket, among other things. Sally sat next to me in the back, seatbelt on, snoring quietly. He'd fallen asleep half an hour ago. We'd dosed him with Special K to make things easier.

 

Sally was a degenerate gambler, from what I heard, although I didn't exactly hear much. He was nobody who owed around eight G's to a somebody, Mickey told me. Sally wasn't paying the vig. Sally wasn't paying off the principal. Sally may have told somebody who knew that somebody that he didn't give a shit about the aforementioned shylock somebody. I hope I got that right.

 

So, Sally was out there, still gambling at 2 AM at one of his usual haunts, when the three of us found him. We found him because we'd been looking for him. He was sanctioned to go.

 

The plan wrote itself. Sally was drunk as a skunk and wanted to go get laid, and Johnny knew just the place. The Fluff House made for the perfect murder destination, because it was in a different town altogether and anything could happen on the way over there, even if any do-gooder decided to do good and be a witness.

 

As for me, I bought Sally a coffee to help him sober up and Mickey drugged it to help him pass the fuck out. Mickey microdosed ketamine recreationally, which he said don't make him a fiend, but, either way, him having the stuff did come in handy this one time. We made a decent crew, the three of us, or so I thought.

 

Truth be told, I was feeling a bit sleepy myself. Keeping my eyes open quickly became a chore. Something about long drives had a way of lulling me unconscious. It could have also been all the cigar smoke that I was breathing in. I didn't even smoke, not that these guys would ever have cared.

 

I yawned like a hippo, which led me to having another coughing fit. "You okay, kid?" Johnny asked, turning around to blow more smoke in my face. My hero. I shook my head and waved him off.

 

As I was wiping away my cigar tears, I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to give Sally a proper once over. He was laying still, his hands and feet were ziptied, his eyes were closed, he really should have been in the trunk, but Mickey was afraid he'd make an identifiable mess back there. Whatever that meant.

 

We'd given Sally a full dose of horse tranquilizer, which should have... killed him, probably. He wasn't snoring anymore. Maybe he was finally dying. Good. I yawned again and turned to say something to Johnny and then I saw movement again.

 

It all happened at once. Sally raised his ziptied hands up with what looked like a gun - I didn't have time to ask - and, because I was closest, he pointed it at me. Or tried to. I went for the gun and the gun went off. The gun shot was like an explosion going off in the car, it was so loud that I thought for sure it perforated my eardrums.

 

Somehow, I caught ahold of the gun and I held onto it like a drowning man. I pointed it down, away from myself and the guys. I shouted for Johnny to do something. The Ford Taurus swerved left and right, the rubber on its tires screeching for mercy. We bounced up in the air. The gun went off again. And again. And again. We were all screaming by that point. Sally had one eye half-closed and the other wide open, looking like a stroke victim and moaning like a zombie.

 

I was shouting at the fucking prick to let go of the fucking gun, as if that would help, when suddenly Sally's psychotic face burst open like a ripe watermelon, squirting its juice everywhere. More gun shots, from a different direction this time. I closed my eyes and mouth a little late as my own face got sprayed with pump after pump of Sally's blood. It occurred to me even later to turn my face away from it all, and I did, but by then the shots had stopped. It had been five or six in total. Maybe more.

 

I eventually dared to open my eyes again. Sally's face was doing its best impression of the elevator scene from The Shining. The car wasn't moving anymore. Neither was Sally. I finally managed to wrench the gun clear from his hands. It was a Russian make. A little one. A Makarov, or a TT, I don't know. A small gun that caused a lot of trouble.

 

We might have been there like that for an hour, or ten seconds, depending on your perspective. I glanced at Johnny and Mickey. They both stared back at me, dumbfounded, with pistols in their hands. They'd both lost their cigars. Me looking at them must have been a cue of some sort, because Johnny started screaming again. "Fuck! I thought you said you patted him down!"

 

"I did!" Mickey protested, giving himself a once over. He'd gotten sprayed with Liquid Sally too, but not nearly as badly as me. "I patted 'im down! He must have kept it by his brajole or something, I don't know."

 

"Fuck!" John shouted again. "Fucking idiot! Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me, Mickey? What good are you then?"

 

"Shut the fuck up. Stop shouting at me. I ain't a fuckin' queer, Johnny, I ain't gonna touch 'im down there," Mickey said, clambering out of the car.

 

We all decided to get out of the Death Mobile. There were trees all around us, as tall as mountains. Credit where credit was due, when the shit hit the fan, Mickey had found a trail and taken us into the forest. "Hey, look. What's done is done. Okay?" Mickey added, and lit himself a smoke, as if after a job well done.

 

"Oh, 'what's done is done', huh?" Johnny growled, and he slammed his fist down on the hood of Mickey's Taurus. "You Howdy Doody motherfucker. If I didn't need you to help us carry this piece of shit, dig the hole, whatever, I'd pop you too. I swear to God."

 

"Yeah, you'd pop me, Johnny. Go ahead, pop me. Fuckin' cocksucker. Marry my sister. Pop me. Fuckin' motherfucker."

 

I was the last one to get out of the car and I didn't quite make it. I tumbled out and rolled onto the ground like I was putting on a circus act. All of the pain suddenly hit me at once, like a bolt from the blue. I touched my knee and, yeah, it hurt even more. I groaned like I was about to give birth. Johnny and Mickey quit their bickering and both turned to stare at me.

 

Blood poured down my leg at a slow and steady trickle, like sweat on a hot afternoon. I'd caught a round there during all the shooting. Hit me in the worst possible place other than an artery - the knee. I could almost feel the hot slug searing its imprint into the bone. Mickey, a decent sort of guy after all, sauntered over to help me up.

 

"You'll be all right. It's nothin'," Mickey said. He helped prop me up against the car. It was very painful and very hard to stand up, but it was kind of important that we did our business and got out of there quickly. What did they do in Pulp Fiction when this shit happened?

 

"You hear me? This is nothin'," Mickey said again. He slapped me lightly on the cheek, and although I could hardly see him or anything else in those pitch black woods, I knew his palm came away red with Sally's blood.

 

As if reading my mind, John leaned into the car and turned the ceiling light on. The Ford Taurus became a bloodstained fucked up little lighthouse and we could all see each other a little better. Mickey continued. "My vet friend, guy who gets me the K, you kno--"

 

Mickey's head exploded too. All his strings were cut and he crumpled to the ground.

 

A few more gun shots rang out. Close range. Johnny.

 

I managed to stay standing and even a little calm throughout the whole thing. I wasn't too shocked. I'd kind of seen it coming. Or maybe my adrenaline was still up. I touched my knee again while Johnny walked over to Mickey and gave his corpse a kick. Yep. Still dead.

 

A little panic started creeping up the inside of my stomach. How were we gonna make all this go away? We'd brought shovels, but this was a whole fucking ordeal now. We'd have to burn the car. Burn the bodies. Burn everything. Were we gonna start a forest fire for this? Would that even be good enough? Could we get everything?

 

Johnny didn't seem to care. He lit himself a smoke, as if it was his turn for that now. A car passed by, somewhere far away, and we both turned to look at the lights until they winked back out into the dark. I had to say something.

 

"My fuckin' blood, Johnny," I pleaded. I needed his help to get out of there. I was afraid that he wouldn't help me clean up. That he'd just leave me there. "My-- my blood. It's everywhere. The DNA. The Feds are gonna--"

 

Johnny was staring at me funny. I stopped talking. God, I could smell all the blood on me. It smelled like pennies.

 

"You're a good kid, Nicky," Johnny said to me, levelling his gun in a way that pointed it directly at my chest. He had it at his hip, like an old-timey cowboy. Probably thought I didn't see it. Or maybe I was meant to see it.

 

Johnny’s eyes were wide open saucers. His blood must have still been up. He licked his dry lower lip like he was contemplating between toast or pancakes for breakfast. When he finally spoke again, it made me flinch.

 

"We've got some work to do. Can you walk?"

 

I swallowed the lump in my throat. Only one word would get me out of there alive.

 

"Yes."

 

--

 

OOC Information

 

We hold the right to character kill you for any reason if you work for us.

 

Your permission to post screenshots will be in line with your membership.

 

A Marty Halzer joint.

 

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Adam_Ottone

[BadassBaboon]

Reserved.

[chalupaa]

aww shii, I like this

[EaaTh]

goodluck!

[padinni]

Looking good! Wish you best of luck

[Eckho]

FIRE!

 

[olly2000]

Gonna’ take this far!!

[Bellagio]

Best of luck homie.

[colorlessrainbow]

good luck brother

[Xposed]

Good luck, gonna keep a lil eye on the thread ❤️