The giant transvestite sat at the tarot card table as he chose the appropriate cards for his friend, the medium, to read his future. It was the third psychic he had gone to since Theresa Chavez had released him from jail just a few days ago, and each one had refused to tell them what they saw. They began chatty and happy as usual, looked at his cards, and then turned sympathetic and sent him away.
Leon could only assume that he had irreparably damaged his karma for all eternity by agreeing to the District Attorney's bargain, but he hadn't known what else to do. He had already done two stints in the can for prostitution and another very long one for murder, and he knew that he would never survive another. Straight men may have gay sex in prison, but they remain macho, butch thugs who delight in tormenting the true fags. The giant transvestite had learned how to take care of himself over the years and had become quite the iron-pumping devotee. He could take on two skinheads with relative ease, perhaps three homophobic "brothers" if he got lucky, maybe even a quartet of the Latino boys. But prison is about gangs, and the legitimate homosexuals tend to cower and run in the face of brute force. Leon would be all alone. Like a swift gazelle in the jungle, he would be the prize target for the various tribes to trap, torment and devour. It had happened so many times before in so many prisons, and Leon could not face it again.
But he loved Robby, had loved him from the first time that he saw a rerun of "School, Sweet School." The perfect, beautiful teacher had spoken directly to him, told him that he was worthy of love, and to be proud of who and what he truly was. Robby had been little Leon's first wet dream and among his earliest masturbatory fantasies.
So when Theresa gave the giant she-man his choice, Leon simply broke down and cried. He had only killed the skinheads to protect Robby, and now it seemed that his only chance for survival was to destroy him.
He couldn't do it.
"Then you made your choice," Leon remembered the dike-bitch saying as she coldly started out of the room. "Now I just have to make mine. Life... or death."
And just as she had begun to open the door, Leon shouted his agreement to the only option he felt he had.
"All right!" he wept. "I'll do it! Just don't send me back there!"
So only a weekend later, Leon anxiously leaned on the tarot card table as his friend turned the cards -- the table itself coming close to tipping over because of his huge body mass.
"Chill, baby," said the gay psychic. "I'm getting there."
Normally, Leon knew better than to ask for a reading from someone as close to him as this man. Like medical surgeons, psychics require a degree of objectivity to perform at peak efficiency, but no one else would tell him what they had seen and Leon didn't know where else to turn.
The psychic's face turned dour as he looked over the cards with an expression that can only be categorized as deep regret.
"What?" asked Leon. "What? What is it? What do you see?"
"Leon, honey," said the gay medium as he put his hand gently on top of his friend's. "You're gonna die."
It was the same night that Norman was in his home obsessing over Robby, the same night Cheyenne worried about her brother's going after Robby, the same night Lisa went to Royalties to meet Robby. And it was late.
A petty thief sat on a park bench in the Sepulveda basin and lit up a joint. He took several satisfying drags of the California Gold as he tried to decide if he should hold up a liquor store or a gas station as soon as he was done. He had absolutely no fear of getting caught in his robbery, nor any worries about the police nabbing him for his drug use. Through nothing but sheer dumb luck, one of the most influential prosecutors in the Valley had promised to protect him. He could get caught red-handed in the most heinous of crimes and she would keep him out of jail. She had already done it once. As long as he agreed to testify against Robby Rockman in his upcoming murder trial, Theresa Chavez would remain his guardian angel.
The thief was fifteen years old, white and needed money for a hotel. He had left his ramshackle home in Van Nuys less than a week ago after shoving a steak knife into his stepfather's belly, and he still wasn't quite sure why he had done it. The stepdad had accused the boy of swiping his pot -- which the boy had done -- and the boy responded by verbally assaulting his step-asshole for all the times the step-asshole had given his mother shit. The mother told her son not to speak that way, and then the boy lashed out at his mom for letting the big Pollack slob treat her like a whore. The stepfather slapped the boy for speaking to his mother so disrespectfully, and the mother leaped to her son's defense. She grabbed her pimp-husband's arms and a struggle ensued, ending with the man back fisting his wife across the jaw and knocking her to the ground, bleeding.
It was nothing the boy hadn't seen a million times before -- a typical family dinner at his house. But this time there was a steak knife in his hand because his mom had made a roast, and his stepdad's over-inflated gut was wobbling within two feet in front of him. The knife simply WANTED to puncture the giant balloon that was the stepfather's gut, so the boy simply let it.
The man fell back, more stunned than pained. Blood spurted out of his disgustingly massive belly as he clutched himself in shock. The boy's mother screamed, told him how useless and insane he was, and that she wanted him to leave her home and never come back. But the boy merely remained at his seat and finished his roast beef, then grabbed some ice cream out of the freezer for dessert.
"The wound's not deep enough to kill 'im, Ma," the boy correctly pointed out as he calmly chewed his food. "The big pig's got too much blubber protecting him."
The police arrived thirty minutes later at the mother's behest. They carted the boy off to the Van Nuys jailhouse where he was tossed in a cell with a drunk and a transvestite, and a little while later, a TV star and a couple of skinheads.
The boy didn't particularly care that the skinheads were about to beat the actor to death, and it never occurred to him to step in to stop it. Better some rich fuck than himself. He was surprised when the transvestite came to the actor's rescue, and even more surprised at the giant she-man's strength and ability. But his appreciation of the moment was akin to a really great movie ending, and nothing more. Regardless of what happened to any of these fucks, he himself was going to prison for at least five years because no one was going to vouch for him -- even his own mom was going to say what a shit he had been all his life.
So when the Public Defender was unable to get the boy released on bail, the little thief wasn't surprised. When he was instructed to accept a five-year plea, he did as he was told and resigned himself to the situation.
But when the D.A. herself pulled him out of the can to arrange a private meeting in which she agreed to have all his charges dropped if he would only "tell the truth" about the skinheads' murders, he was more than willing. And when she told him the specific "truth" that she wanted him to repeat, he went along without an iota of guilt and thanked his lucky stars that this angel had come along.
But now he sat alone in the Sepulveda basin, knowing he had the full freedom to go anywhere except home because his stepfather would surely beat him to a pulp. He decided that the best way to get back at them was to live in the lap of luxury for the time being while his mother and step-asshole rotted in that filthy little rat hole of an apartment. Maybe the Radisson under the freeway. Maybe even one of those really ritzy joints by Universal Studios. But for that he needed money, so he decided he would rob both the liquor store AND the gas station.
He butted his marijuana cigarette and put the roach in his pocket -- five or six roaches adds up to one full joint and he didn't know when he would have the opportunity to make his next score. He started off toward the nearest liquor store feeling better about life than he had in years. The worst that could happen was he got caught, and Theresa would put him right back out on the street. The best thing was that he'd spend the night in a big hotel room with a Jacuzzi and room service -- and if he stole enough cash, a grown-up prostitute to boot.
That's why it was such a shock when that bullet came out of nowhere and virtually blew off his right leg.
"Why now?" was all he could think as he fell to the ground.
His assailant took no chances on the second shot, placed the gun right against the boy's temple and fired. The bullet exploded in the young thief's brain, killing him instantly.
The drunk didn't have nearly as interesting a history. In fact, he wasn't really a drunk at all. Just a normal guy in his mid-thirties who sold TVs and microwaves in a small, independently owned electronics store. He had simply gone to one Independence Day party too many that night and had ten or twelve beers too many as well.
In fact, it was odd for him to drink quite that much at all. He didn't think it had anything to do with the fact that his wife had just left him, nor did he believe it was as a result of losing his job. He was simply blowing off steam and went too far.
On his way home that evening, he fell asleep at the wheel and bashed into what he thought was a telephone pole. He wasn't hurt, but according to the white, male D.A., the condition of the elderly ladies inside the other vehicle remained critical.
That first D.A. also told him and his lawyer that they were going to throw the book at him. If the women died, he'd be tried for manslaughter; if they survived he'd be up for criminal negligence. Either way, he was going to do hard time. The fact that this was his first offense didn't seem to matter.
But the second D.A., a woman this time, who had taken over the case, brought him into a small room to meet with her alone. She told him how his lawyer had dropped the ball, but that he didn't need one because she wanted to help him. She wanted to make a deal with him, she went on, but what she had to say was quite unorthodox and she couldn't risk saying it in front of another attorney. If the electronics salesman insisted on being represented, she'd have no choice but to continue to charge him with the same felony crimes as her predecessor.
So he was more than willing to hear her out. He didn't understand why she wanted him to lie about a TV star. He could only assume, based on the many TV shows that he had seen, that Robby was a hardened criminal who had slipped through the law several times before. This was the only way the judicial system could put him behind bars.
This, of course, was not why he agreed to the lie -- it was merely his rationalization. He ultimately conceded to do whatever Theresa wanted of him because of words like "criminal negligence," "manslaughter one," "hard time" and "anal rape."
The fact that he had been sleeping during most of his time in the holding cell and had no idea who really killed the skinheads didn't seem to bother Theresa. She claimed that his admission of being asleep "part of the time" only added credibility to the rest of his story. All she needed him to do was to state, under oath, that he woke up to see Robby do the killing. So he listened to her point-by-point tale, wondering how his life had sunk so low.
It was a little less than an hour after the fifteen-year-old thief had been shot in the head. The unemployed electronics salesman got off the city bus on his way back from his first A.A. meeting. As Theresa had promised, his car was returned to him the very next morning in the exact shape in which the police had impounded it -- in other words, it was totaled. The salesman didn't have enough money to have it fixed just yet and couldn't believe that he was bus dependent once again after all these years.
He got off the bus and watched it drive away as he bemoaned just this fact, and then one stray bullet came at him from out of nowhere, rammed through his rib cage and into his heart, ending his life instantly.
Robby woke up the next morning to find himself lying on a lumpy, unmade bed with sticky sheets in a dingy, dark hole of a bedroom that smelled like cheap perfume and sweaty socks. The windows were boarded up from the outside with planks of wood in front of wrought iron bars, and his jacket hung neatly on the ledge. There was a waste paper basket beside his bed with an empty supermarket plastic bag lining it. His back hurt and his head was killing him. He was surprised to find that he was wearing a neck brace, and he could only wonder who had put it on him. He felt the back of his head, just above the brace, to find that it had swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, and he could feel the sticky remnants of his own dried blood.
He groaned as he pulled himself out of the poor excuse for a bed and headed to the bedroom door. On a peeling, laminated table was a tray with a tuna fish sandwich, a handful of tortilla chips and a cup of herbal tea, as well as the L.A. Times, USA Today, and a few of the more popular tabloids. Although far from hot, the teacup was warmer than room temperature, and Robby could deduce that whoever had left it had done so recently.
He headed to the bedroom door. As frightened as he was to see what was on the other side, he knew he would have to face whatever it was eventually.
But the door was locked. He called out for help and banged on the door frantically, but there simply appeared to be no one on the other side. He got his cell phone out of his jacket pocket to call for help, only to find that the battery had been removed.
He had no idea where he was or why, or even how he had gotten there, and it appeared that he had no way of leaving.
And then he threw up into the waste paper basket.
*** Up Next: "Birth Of A Supermodel" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
Copyright © 2015 Tinseltrash, Inc.