Valasco Rolez! Parole Violation

Part 5 of 7 of Valasco Rolez!

Written by Kiefer Lee

Edited by Alexander Taylor

“Valasco?” A voice scoffed. His muscles became tense as the bathroom door slammed shut. “Valasco Rolez?”

There were only a few occasions where he hated to hear his name. Half-naked in a bar bathroom certainly wasn’t a good time for him. 

Water ran through Valasco’s hair as he knelt over the sink. He pulled up and threw his waterlogged hair behind him. It slapped on his back and the water running down his sides soaked his pants and puddled on the floor. Valasco was ready to swing if he recognized the other man, and sure enough he knew that face. But his fist couldn’t follow through. 

A pathetic, wide and balding man in glasses stood before him with a half smile on his face. Water dripped down Valasco’s body, but he ignored it as he was left trying to conjure the name of this man he had recognized; and clearly recognized him in return.

“Hey, some of the other guys were just here! If I rush, maybe I could, well…” His mouth opened like floodgates. “What are you doing here? Why haven’t you been at work? You know you missed the funniest thing… but wait is your shower broken? Does that mean you live around here? How come you never came here to drink with us? We told you about this place several times, didn’t we?” On and on he went. Questions into rambling and rambling into more questions.

Big Charlie’s Gnarly Meals

‘That’s right.’ Valasco wanted to tear his own eyelids off when he realized the familiarity of the sign outside wasn’t some fleeting mistake. He should’ve realized a bathroom as clean as this one would still attract flies.

“Homeless,” Valasco interrupted. “And I was hoping for a little privacy here so if you’ll…”

“Homeless?” The pudgy man’s mouth turned into a black circle. Valasco’s hand curled into a fist.

“And if you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna…”

“There’s gotta be something I could do to help!” 

Valasco was stunned silent, and without hesitation began to smile. His fist, however, needed a few moments to unclench. He straightened his back out, and looked into the eyes of his ex-coworker. 

“Anything, Valasco, name it.”

“Well, maybe we could just start with a drink…” His lips curved and the profile of his face in the mirror showed the truth and evil in his smile. But the man across from him was too eager to help Valasco to see such a nasty thing.

The man nodded, then moved for the toilets in an emergent fright.

Valasco shook his head, whipping his hair around, failing to dry it. Simultaneously, the pudgy man struggled to urinate even behind the stall doors.

Valasco waited impatiently for a stream that eventually came. Then he pulled the pistol from its hiding place from under the sink and stuffed it down his pants.

The man stepped out of the stall, adjusting his belt and Valasco smiled at him in pity.

They sat together at the oddly family friendly bar. Reading from a paper menu with a cartoon pig stamped on it, the man next to him ordered two waters and a beer for the both of them. 

Valasco looked at him strangely.

He replied with: “Still gotta drive,” and a smile.

Valasco rolled his eyes over and watched the curvy female bartender. Glancing occasionally around the basic and familiar looking style of Big Charlie’s Gnarly Meals. Suitably safe for a man like the one Valasco sat with.

The bartender came around and placed the drinks in front of them. She knew Valasco had been staring at her in that strange way only he could perfect. When she made accidental eye contact, he pulled his fingers over his lips and stuck his tongue through them.

She walked away in disgust.

So be it.

The faster Valasco drank the sooner she’d have to sway back in that cheesy corporate yet somehow skin tight outfit. With his lips on the glass he wondered if they all had to dress like she did or if today was his lucky day. The taste however, was anything but refreshing. Each drop of liquor only made him yearn for the real shit. The package hidden in his back pocket, although tugging at him like a hook in his ribcage, would be well worth the wait.

He was half way down the glass when the man beside him shouted in his ear and startled Valasco. He choked on the alcohol and turned to the man, almost expecting Carson to be standing there with a gun to his head.

“Whoa,” Although his sudden outcry sounded violent in nature, he was only leaning against the counter and smiling at Valasco, his dimples overtaking the rest of his face. “Got somewhere to be, racer?”

Valasco’s eyebrow began to twitch as he lowered his drink to the countertop.

“Not in particular…” His chest erupted in a burning sensation as he imagined smashing the glass over the man’s head. Valasco’s teeth grinded together trying to keep his body on the barstool instead of lashing out. The man must have seen the anger on Valasco’s face, because he began to sputter out sounds until he found control of his own tongue again.

“Don’t even worry about it.” He looked away, unsure of himself, then turned back and smiled with something more than nervous optimism pinching at his cheek. “You can stay at my place tonight!”

Valasco took a deep breath inwards and then exhaled long and heavy. Taking quick glances around the room to ground and reset himself, he forcefully changed his face back to his facade. He wasn’t satisfied with it but he could play the part. The man’s pale enthusiasm was something he could imitate for as long as he could keep himself patient. He could play along with it, just as long as he could get something out of it.

“You’d be doing me such a big favor. Just until I get back on my feet.” 

The other man didn’t recognize a well rehearsed line when it was performed for him. 

Behind Valasco’s innocent victimized smile, was burning contempt. This man who had gone his whole life without helping someone now found himself an easy solution by treating Valasco like a charity. Something he could use on his day of judgment to dissociate himself from his past sins. This arrogance made Valasco sick to his stomach, but it gave him a foot in the door. It gave him somewhere to go, and somewhere to make his next move against the people that betrayed him.

The man was delighted with himself or delighted to have company for the evening, and once again spoke in a giddy fashion about stories Valasco had no intention to remember.

He spoke about casting a line and hooking bait, and reeling in mediocrity. Valasco feigned laughter alongside some story of somebody falling into the water. Keeping his eye out for the bartender kept him just busy enough not to snap from boredom.

Valasco’s fake expression studied over the man’s pale skin. Clearly he hadn’t spent any time in the sun for a few years now and he must have been dining out on the same stories for exactly that same amount of time. The man’s nasally voice, glasses and fat protruding over his belt suggested to Valasco that the man had been deathly low on testosterone for far too long.

As he went on and on, Valasco imagined the man dressing as a conductor and playing with toy trains. It didn’t help that the man was now pouting about his parent’s divorce and the effects it had on him growing up.  At his age surely both parents were dead or dying, what could he possibly have left to get over from his mommy and daddy breaking up? If they would give this overgrown child a job and a car then the real homeless had no excuses left. He should be doing watercolors with his classmates, not feigning masculinity at this shit franchise.

It was more sickening than amusing.

His foot tapped rapidly. The idea of a grown man seeing the world through such basic and childlike lenses agitated and agitated him more and more.

“You know,” His voice turned airy and polite, momentarily reclaiming Valasco’s focus. “It’s gonna be alright, buddy.” It might have been comforting to hear for some people, but he could see through it for the condescension it really was.

“You really think so? Even for a guy like me?” Valasco played a rare note from his voice. 

The waitress slapped the check between both men disdainfully. The man next to him slid it in front of himself thoughtless of the waitress’ manner.

“Of course, anybody could have a second chance!” Eugene shuffled his legs on his barstool as he slid closer to the receipt. “Really, we often need more than one.”

“This drink… the company has really helped me. To think clearly.” Valasco spoke quietly. “You really are too kind.”

“No problem, at all. And hey! If it really gnaws at you, we’ll talk about compensation at some point.” He slapped Valasco on the shoulder.

“After the week I’ve had…” Valasco stopped to chuckle. “I’m certain I’ll pay you back for this.”

Valasco watched closely as the man signed his name on the check.

Eugene T.

“I sure will…”

In the parking lot next door, cops were going in and out of the gas station and Jimmy’s car. Valasco glanced, then ignored them. The black car wasn’t his problem anymore, and neither was Jimmy.

Eugene and Valasco loaded into a bright blue sedan.

Valasco’s patience was growing thin from sitting in a car for the last day and a half. 

When he tried lighting a cigarette, the yuppie Eugene nearly went berserk. Started crying about the ash and the smell. All the while his radio sang whiny sounds. Valasco’s grip on the pistol in his underwear was screaming to carjack Eugene and take off.

But Eugene knew too much about Valasco. And Valasco knew he would go back to prison if somebody like Eugene could identify him in a line-up. So he let go of the pistol grip, scratched his balls and took a breath to reset his mind.

“Hey, pal?” Valasco forced his voice out softly, and as gently as a phony like himself could.

“What? What is it?” Eugene was startled and shifted around in his seat like a hornet was flying around his head. Valasco grit his teeth, stuffing down the urge to shove the gun barrel in Eugene’s eye socket.

“Could you not tell anybody at work you saw me? You know, it’s all just so embarrassing.”

“Oh, anything for you pal.” Eugene echoed Valasco’s tone, unaware of the deceit he projected in his own voice. When he smiled his chubby cheeks seemed to puff out and he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in a docile yet self-righteous ploy for attention. Everything he did was irksome to Valasco.

Eugene glanced at Valasco, and they exchanged happy trusting smiles.

Valasco’s face muscles ached from smiling through California traffic. And even with the windows down or the air turned up his throat couldn’t handle the heavy air. Feeling like he was choking he kicked the car door open before Eugene completely pulled into his designated covered parking space.

He slammed the foot brake in a panic. Valasco lost his footing and rolled over the asphalt gasping for air.

Bringing himself to his feet he shook his head back and forth hoarsely grumbling just over the sound of Eugene’s engine. When Valasco cleared his throat and stood up straight, Eugene turned the key and killed the engine to his blue sedan. There was a moment of silence before Valasco turned around and met Eugene’s eyes.

Eugene froze for a moment in terror, seeing Valasco’s real face for the first time.

The car door hung open as the two stared at each other, with only the breeze to break the silence.

He cleared the lump in his throat then chuckled. Trying to get the hell away from Valasco’s dead face he said the first words that came to mind.

“Too much?” Eugene broke eye contact with him and began picking his things out of the car. “To drink I mean. I’m uh, just kidding.”

There was a lake of vibrant green in between each different stretch of concrete. The grass was vibrant and stood straight like a crowd of millions in an audience. The hedges were cut perfectly earlier that day into rectangles with rigid edges. Stone cherubs seemed to play throughout the complex like a garden. It was a beautiful community. Or at least, the structure around the community was something to behold. You could never tell what kind of evil hid just behind a lovely looking door. 

538

Eugene unraveled his keys to unlock his own to Valasco.

They walked into the clean apartment together. There were vases with tall plants next to the hallway, framed photographs and art plastered on the walls. The carpet was white and the lavender scented air pressed against Valasco’s face, blowing his rotting cigarette stained breath and the smell of his dead teeth back into his own nose. 

“Could I offer you a drink,” Eugene spoke politely until he saw the disgust on Valasco’s face.

“Could you?” He asked pointedly.

Eugene kicked his shoes off and left them at the square of hardwood by the front door. Then he stepped quietly over the white carpet.

Valasco took one look at his shoes and shrugged. He stepped onto the carpet and meandered around the living room. There were large group photos, where Valasco only recognized the one face in them. Eugene had always looked pathetic, Valasco surmised. He glanced to the white lit kitchen where Eugene was pouring liquids into glasses. Eugene’s eyes shifted from Valasco’s feet quickly back to the drinks.

Valasco kept moving alongside the wall, dragging his fingers over the dull paint as he stepped. Moving towards the glass patio door he continued to glare at the photos he passed, until he landed on a fresh one. There was a modern Eugene, balding and all, wrapping his arms around a blonde bombshell, with blue eyes that pierced through the camera lens, and a rack that filled the frame of the photo. Eugene’s hands held her by the waist, and his goofy smile sat on her shoulder. 

Eugene walked around the kitchen bar with a drink in both hands, filled with such care that they sat exactly half-filled. Still Eugene held both out, saying to Valasco that he could have the one of his choice. Valasco bit his lip before speaking, but his eyebrows brimmed together from violent fury and frustrated inaction. 

Valasco blindly ripped a glass from his hand instead of swinging on him. 

“What happened to you, Valasco? You just stopped coming in one day. Ricky wanted to tell us that you were fired but I didn’t believe it. Then you lose your home! How awful. No wonder you haven’t been in. Boy that Ricky sure spins a tale about people!” He said, expecting a laugh in return.

Valasco, who had been chugging his scotch, didn’t respond to anything Eugene said. He simply shoved his empty glass back into Eugene’s free hand, pushed the glass pane open and stepped out onto the cool patio. 

“Uh, how about another?” Eugene said, taking the empty glass back to the kitchen. Valasco’s ears perked up and listened to the sound of a bottle being dragged on top of the refrigerator. He lit a cigarette from his thinning pack and leaned against the black rail. 

“How do you do it, Eugene? Always one step behind everybody.” Valasco said, loud enough that Eugene could recognize his voice, but not the words he spoke.

“Everything okay, Valasco?” Eugene stood in the doorway and handed the glass back to him, this time filled above his own cup.

“Sure,” He replied, smiling but staring out into the dark. “I’m just lucky to have friends like you.” 

“Well, of course.” He said. “Anybody in my position would help somebody else in need.”

“How long can I stay?”

“As long as you need, Valasco!” Eugene lifted his arm but it hung in the air momentarily, as Eugene’s eyes jumped back and forth from Valasco’s worn out face to the light black marks made over his white carpet. His hand recoiled back to his side. “Do you have any family you can stay with?”

Valasco turned to him as if being accused.

“Well! Not that it matters right now. As long as you need, Valasco.” Eugene put his hand on Valasco’s shoulder, finishing his gesture. “As long as you need.”

“Thanks, old friend.” Valasco said, dropping his cigarette and smothering it with one wipe under his shoe. The black stain smeared across the otherwise clean gray concrete. 

Eugene bent over to pick up the cigarette butt, then followed Valasco inside.

Valasco was already leaning into the gray couch, one leg resting on his knee. Eugene trashed the cigarette then sat on the opposite side of him. Valasco wanted to roll his eyes and be left alone until Eugene began talking about his girlfriend.

“Well like you might’ve heard around the water-cooler, things are getting serious between me and-”

“I heard!” Valasco feigned enthusiasm successfully and Eugene launched into a story about some chance meeting. The monotone sound grated him. Valasco leaned against the armrest and pushed his face against his palm, nodding along less to the story and more to his own planning thoughts and crippling desires. 

From here he could start cutting down the organization. Steal their clientele, kill more dealers, and eventually, if he was lucky, he could cut off the heads of those measuring themselves up as kings. Carson, the bloody boot on his back. Hatchet, the clean boot that replaced him. And Bunko, the sticky sock that Valasco wore willingly.

There were others too. Men like Steve and Clint, and other colleagues he would have to see for himself to remember. He would be remiss not to drop in on everybody that he could. Nobody ever wants to feel left out.

As he considered hiding his stash somewhere in the apartment, a voice announced herself, loud and clear to the room. Both men looked up, seeing the woman standing beside the vases and plants, Valasco’s jaw nearly dropped. 

Eugene stood up to introduce the two, and tried to explain Valasco’s presence to her with a whimper in his tone. She didn’t seem to be listening according to Valasco. She stood there staring Valasco in the eye, and together they hardly acknowledged Eugene’s presence. 

Valasco wanted to glance back at the picture on the wall. But her skimpy night attire cut off where her thighs met, and her lacy top left incredibly little to the imagination. He knew it was the same girl from the photo, but it was only now that he realized this was also the same girl he met only days ago. One of the only ones that ever got away.

Valasco smiled politely as Eugene turned back to him, speaking to him unheard. He couldn’t help himself from grinning wider as she tugged lightly but demandingly on Eugene’s sleeve.

“Well, Valasco, we should wrap this up. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’ll see you then.” Valasco’s eyes never pulled away from her. 

Valasco stood at the toilet pissing one last time for the night.

Then he moved to the mirror, leaving yellow sprayed over the clean porcelain seat. He turned on the faucet. Simply listening to it run as he made eye contact with himself in the mirror.

“Guess she’s just into ugly guys.” He chuckled to himself. Then he spread his fingers over his face like a mask, and pulled at his skin.

‘When was the last time a real man touched her?’ Valasco wondered. 

Valasco backed out, perhaps leaving the faucet running. He meandered to the refrigerator and reached for the top. The glass bottle slid across the surface into Valasco’s arms, then pressed against his lips.

It would have to hold him over for the night. 

When he thought of the woman’s figure, how she looked in the photo versus how she looked in her lingerie, he became comfortably certain that he would smoke his stash the next day. There was no need to hide it, anywhere.

The apartment was dead silent for the rest of the night. Even as he held his breath to listen, the darkness offered nothing back.

“Eugene, you disappoint me…” He whispered to himself before drifting into intoxicated slumber.

Valasco’s eyes shot open in a frightened sweat. But he laid still, listening to Eugene fumble in the kitchen for coffee and his sack lunch. He laid there motionless, yet found himself considering the idea of stretching out and saying good morning. Wishing him a good day and giving him the honest opportunity to ask him to leave. The heaviness of liquor and hours of comfortable sleep made him feel gratitude towards Eugene. And he could pay it back in kind, if he would just leave on his own. But he laid there. 

Eugene, standing still in the kitchen, couldn’t fathom why his hands were shaking. Why he couldn’t hold the two coffee cups still. All he had to do was move over to Valasco and offer it to him. There was sweat on his forehead and he couldn’t understand why. He stared at the shaking cups, taking an inaccurate account of the time to the beat of a clock ticking. Thinking to himself that he would have to take a sick day if the shaking didn’t stop soon. But he never laid down a hard definition of how soon that was. It felt as though shrapnel had peppered his intestines that morning. It was wrong to fall back on a promise. But was he wrong to make that promise to begin with? He had his own life to worry about, could he even help Valasco? After one slow blink of his aching eyes he sprung to action, and dumped the second cup into the sink. He couldn’t be late. He simply couldn’t afford to miss the rent.

Valasco was straining his fingertips on the couch’s tight felt, looking for a grip and holding his breath. He was a free man who could give himself everything. What more did he want? What else did he need to take? Valasco’s heart was still empty and yearning for more.

When Eugene walked around the bar counter Valasco closed his eyes and feigned to still be asleep. Eugene fumbled around more, grabbed his keys then stood by the door next to the couch.

For a moment Valasco felt Eugene’s eyes watching over him. A long silence of about fifteen to twenty seconds passed before Eugene sighed and stepped out of the door.

The key turned in the lock. Then Eugene’s footsteps, heavy yet unconfident, thumped away. Valasco basked in the silence only momentarily, then stretched his arms out and shook his head.

He stepped out to the patio, pinching a cigarette in his right hand, rolling the filter between his fingertips. He looked over the horizon to watch the skies change from dark to morning light. Valasco was appreciative of the crickets chirping through the silence. Eugene had a lofty place to crash, and as long as he kept his mouth shut, nobody would think to look for him here.

In his left hand he tossed his lighter up and down. Contemplating. He had enough cash. He could buy a plane ticket. Go to New York. See something new. Sometimes Carson made it that far to the East but he’d never find him if he was there. 

But Valasco didn’t leave business unfinished. He didn’t leave bodies unburied. And he didn’t leave murder weapons unclean. He tossed the lighter up, missed the catch, and listened as it collapsed off the balcony.

Valasco’s eyes squinted.

“I hear her calling me.” He lied to himself, grinning, as he turned to look inside the silent apartment, cigarette smoke emanating from his hand.

Eugene felt sick to his stomach from the moment he clocked in. He tried to ignore it, but with a quick glance at his watch he found himself dry heaving over the bathroom sink as early as nine-thirty in the morning.

Mr. Hatchet caught him in the bathroom and politely demanded that he get on with his work or take himself home, unpaid. 

Even with that incentive he couldn’t sit still at his desk.

After about an hour of sweating, nausea and uselessness, he shoved himself away from the desk, got up and started asking around about Valasco Rolez.

She locked the bedroom door after Eugene had left. With his hand gripping the handle he sighed. The familiarity of this scenario was somehow surreal to him this time. She shuffled around in Eugene’s bedsheets, he could hear it through the door. His fingernail tapped on the wood, then stopped. She didn’t reply. 

Valasco couldn’t deny it, the way she hid behind a locked door reminded him of a woman he once claimed to love.

Minding his mistakes from the last time, Valasco took a pass around the apartment. First he stepped out front, and checked for a spare key under the rug. Finding none, he closed the door and made certain of the lock’s strength. If there was a gun in the house it would certainly be in the room with her, and for that, he was willing to take a chance on a beautiful girl.

He stopped at the end of the hall next to the door, and pressed his face against the cold white paint as he clicked his tongue. 

“I could kick it down.” He spoke with enough volume to pierce the door and any chance that she was sleeping. He thought highly of his opening offer. “Are you going to make me do it?”

He didn’t wait to hear her answer, he only started banging his fist on the door.

“

He stopped speaking as he heard something shifting across the floor.

“What is that you’re dragging around back there?” He smiled while pressing his ear against the door. “I can break through anything you put in between us. How much of a mess do you feel like cleaning?”

Perhaps it was the dresser she was dragging to the door. When she didn’t stop pulling at it, he turned down the hall and went for the bottle on Eugene’s fridge. He poured the remaining cup worth out onto the kitchen’s hardwood. Then, dragging his feet to the end of the hallway he held the bottle to his side as he stared at the door.

When the bottle smashed against the door and shattered into the carpet, she squealed and stopped pushing the dresser.

“You know if I’m going to be staying here…” After a pause he broke the silence and grinned to himself. “We’re going to have to talk about the other night…”

The lock quietly came undone.

“Valasco Rolez?” The suited man lowered his cup. “They fired that creep.”

“Wa-wait, so he was fired?” Eugene hadn’t wanted to believe it before but he had no choice but to believe it now. Over and over, and from honest people, they could swear up and down on it. “So, what the hell happened? Job performance? Attitude? Hey, I know he was rough around the edges but the guy, he’s homeless now!”

“No, Eugene.” The suited man looked over his shoulders as he pulled at his collar. “Look, I’m not supposed to talk about it but I was there.”

The man grabbed Eugene by the arm to get him to follow him. They walked through the entire office, from the break room to the bathrooms, searching for a silent place to speak, but they could only find it in the parking lot. The suited man lit a cigarette, took a long drag and sighed.

“You remember Claurice?”

“Uh, not off the top of my head.”

“You remember how there used to be two ladies at that reception desk?”

“I guess I should’ve noticed she’s been out.” Looking back through the glass doors he could see it now. It was only the older one secretary sitting at the front desk. 

“Out, and not likely to come back. That Valasco guy? He… followed her out here.” Then he pointed towards the end of the lot, passed dozens of cars. “She used to park just under that tree. Well, I stepped out and another guy was already dragging him out of the back of her car. Come on, don’t make me say anymore about it.”

Eugene’s skin, lacking much color to begin with, turned whiter. His stomach, never the strongest to begin with, felt as though it would explode with diarrhetic fire out of his backside. 

“Well, that’s when I decided I won’t be quitting cigarettes.” The suited man snuffed out his tobacco. Eugene, although heavy set and fighting nausea, managed to sprint all the way to his blue sedan. The suited man lit another cigarette as the sedan’s tires screeched away.

538

In Eugene’s living room, Valasco pulled a dining chair to the center, and forced her to sit in it. She was the center of the room, and where Valasco focused his attention while he wasn’t building a makeshift pipe from Eugene’s tinfoil and a shot glass. She was speaking to him, but he was looking more than listening once again. She spoke as if they had this conversation before, but Valasco could only vaguely remember. He walked around the bar counter back into the living room with the pipe overflowing with Valasco’s favorite crystalline material.

“You keep trying to turn my ear away from the one voice that matters. Although I admit… I may have gone to church more if I’d known I’d have seen you there.”

She fell silent, and as he circled her, her body began to quake.

“Nothing left to preach? Good. I need some matches, baby. Where am I going to find some in this shithole?” Valasco grinded his teeth together as she looked around the apartment for something to help herself with. Her eyes landed on the side table, with one drawer, and a telephone sitting on top. 

He ripped the wire from the back of the phone and she began to cry. 

The matches hid in the drawer underneath.

Hovering over and watching her sob into her hands. He let her cry herself dry while he thought over the subject of empathy. 

“If you loved Eugene, we wouldn’t be in this situation would we?”

Breathing in through the nostrils, he snorted snot into the back of his throat. Love made him feel all sorts of strange things. It made crying beautiful, and it made a whore into something he understood.

“And if any part of you does love him, or if you just value where he keeps you, well… you’d better do as I ask, then.”

He struck a match and counted the seconds as he stared deeply into the glass base. Once it started to bubble, he pressed the tin to his lips, struck another match, and inhaled deep as he counted the seconds. 

Six, seven… he kept going. Nine, ten…

When the match threatened his fingertips, he pulled back and exhaled over it.

“You know my father actually helped me,” He choked on his words, suddenly uncomfortable around the collar. “At least once, he did. To get my first piece. My first handful. Whatever you call it, if what it was even counted. Can’t remember if it was considered second or third base back then…”

He snatched outward and pulled on her wrist, bringing her body closer to him.

“Heh, first and last time we’d ever been invited to a family thing.” Valasco leaned back grinning awkwardly for a moment.

His hand held her wrist firmly, and it was leading her hand towards the tin foil pipe, but now it stayed frozen. 

“Come on now. Why the hesitation? Isn’t this what you wanted from me?” She said, and Valasco turned to her. The room’s daylight seemed to disappear, as if taken away so they couldn’t be seen by anybody else.

“I didn’t think I even remembered your face…” He began studying her, and let go of his firm grasp on her wrist. 

She leaned back slowly as he began to recognize her. She was still blonde but her face and body changed. Her slender cheeks became round. Her eyebrows became unkempt and her nose reflected his own. There was a figure in the darkness standing behind her, twice their size and appearing to hold her in place without physical contact.

“Did you enjoy your first?” The voice came from her motionless mouth. Then she began to scream and he felt his bones shatter in his chest.

He shook his head violently and her face and body returned to normal. To the girl in the photographs. Eugene’s girl. Slender but well built. Sobbing quietly and smoking out of the tinfoil as he demanded. Valasco looked towards the closed curtains, seeing the light so desperate to come in he snatched the pipe from her hand and walked towards the window.

“Are you trying to say that you’re only doing what you were taught to do? That you didn’t know better?” She spoke again, through her trembling throat.

Valasco held the curtain, then pulled it back, drowning the room in unfiltered light.

“No, I taught myself to do the things that I do. I am not here as some other man’s living reflection.” He turned back, and saw her lying there, crumpled up on the ground. Brownish hair now. Hazel eyes, although he couldn’t see them here. They were buried into the carpet.

He was used to this memory. It didn’t shock him to see it and it didn’t shatter his heart, but it was strange to see it so vividly projected onto another human being. The fate of his first true love imbued onto the visage of somebody he didn’t care for was what made him stumble. And to see his oldest home plastered on the walls of Eugene’s apartment made him feel small as he watched the motionless and molding corpse. 

He waited for a moment, but just as usual she had nothing to say.

Valasco began to circle the body, picking through the details as he stepped slowly around it. Gray bloating skin, shit stains below her and the hair on her head was withering into the carpet fibers. He never knew how she died but he always suspected there was more to it than he remembered. But even in God’s bright lights he didn’t find anything useful. Every detail was just one that he remembered from long ago, and there was nothing else he could learn from being stuck with it. 

He walked to the window, and pulled the curtains closed again.

“Anything else you have to show me?” He began to grin uncomfortably with himself, and reached for the zipper on his pants. “Or is it finally my turn?”

He turned around and froze, seeing the eyes of death threatening him in the form of a woman he knew too well, or knew him too well.

He had to force a smile onto his face just to breathe again.

“I’ll bet you still think about me, don’t you baby?” He studied her dark and young eyes contrasting against the wrinkles and harsh texture of her worn down face.

“God I hope you remember my name… because I don’t even remember yours. If I did I’d find you sleeping in your bedsheets and wrap your head in a pillow case like I did to that fucking-” Valasco stopped himself just short of admitting the truth, and took a better look at her.

She was holding something wrapped in a towel to her chest, with her black hair draping just down over it. She clutched and rocked it but he could feel the coldness emanating from inside it.

Valasco instinctively reached out for her but stopped as her disdainful face snarled at him, and pulled the clutched thing away.

“Why do you have to jump straight to this?” Valasco sighed. “We had some good times too, didn’t we? Can’t we remember those?”

His mind was like a finger running through a deck of cards, desperately searching for one in particular but never finding it. 

“It wasn’t just my fault and you know it.” As he pulled a card from his sleeve his voice became cold. “ You were every bit as responsible, but they only charged me. I took that. I took it on the chin for you.”

Valasco cocked his head to the side as she said nothing to him.

“We were good together… remember? Remember when you burned yourself hiding my gun? God, that was a sexy place to see a scar…”

She was not moved by his nostalgia for better days.

“What he had… before that even came along!” The shattered weakness in his voice betrayed his false confidence. But he did not abandon it, he only gritted his teeth and dug deeper into it. “It was a good thing for me… you could have been the one to save me! But you let them decide for you. You let one mistake cut us apart!” 

“I’ve never heard you admit that it was a mistake before.” Her eyes rolled back and she lost her footing. When the towel unraveled and the contents dropped to the floor in a soft thud, he actually vomited. 

“Maybe…” He whispered as he looked down at his own liquid bile, unsure when he had eaten last. “That’s how I should’ve reacted the first time, but you can’t run from me forever. We’ll be together in hell.”

When he looked back up, Eugene’s girlfriend was staring into the empty air, with foamy drool coming from her mouth and her body was cocked to the side and contorting slowly.

Valasco hummed to himself amusingly as a small smile found its way onto his face.

He glanced down at the smoking pipe in his hand and began to laugh remorsefully.

They had been poisoned.

“Oh, Jimmy.” His jaw began to lock into an unmovable smile. “Jimmy look at what you did to her…”

He crushed the tinfoil and glass in his hand, knowing a man of his experience should have recognized it immediately. Feeling the burning in between his fingers and the stabbing of glass on his palm was as invigorating as the smoke itself was. Even impure it was still a riot of pleasure shocking through his system.

He didn’t need this place like he fooled himself into believing. If he could get some bullets for the gun and a real glass pipe he could set out tonight and flush out the entire organization with one long sweep. The woman of his dreams was sitting in the center of the room, soaking in her blood covered skin, her vacant eyes staring into nothingness. She was there, just out of the corner of his eye, just out of his sight. But there was a ring on her left hand.

“You really thought,” Valasco straightened his stance, staring at the black, red and silver mess in his hand. “That you could kill me with this?”

He began to giggle in a high pitch and airy laugh, which quickly surged into a full cackling fit. Laughing for several minutes until his ribs ached.

“That- woo- you could kill me at all?” He held his hands to his stomach and bent over himself. Waiting to regain control of his breathing. 

The air conditioner was blowing cold on Valasco’s neck. The room was starting to smell. But he saw everything around him as it was. The carpets were scuffed now, but they were still white enough. Eugene’s woman, whatever her name had been, was just that. 

“You never had a chance, Jim.” His voice was cold. 

He slowly pulled up, minding his aging back, and looked over the apartment.

There were heavy steps circling up the stairwell as Valasco rolled the bag back into his pocket for later use. 

He turned to the door listening as the panting heaves got closer and closer.

There was a rustling of a key in the lock. 

Valasco cracked his neck, rotated his shoulders and dropped his pants to his ankles.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, floating slowly around until the door jammed against the bolted chain. The gust of wind rushed in through the door as Valasco’s eyes shot open. Was it one set of footsteps or was it many? The door pulled closed, then slammed forward against the chain. Cracking the white paint that had been creased over the latch.

He wouldn’t make it out of prison a third time.

The only bullets he had were the ones left in the magazine.

It couldn’t end here. He couldn’t get caught like this.

As Eugene slammed through, the broken chain bolt rattled against the door. Their eyes met for an extra long second as Valasco hung halfway over the balcony railing with his pants still caught around his ankles. Eugene began to vomit right there in the doorframe, and Valasco slid off the edge just as he realized there was no danger, crushing his own testicles as he rolled over.