The Blueprint for Saving an Angel

It is mid-September, and I, with every knowledge possible of the event in which I was driving to, chose to wear a suit jacket, my most elegant white button-down, a tie, my finest jeans and terribly worn down, ill-fitting shoes that I paid for with cash at the Value Village furthest where I am now.

You see, this choice of outfit is by design.

As are all things that will take place this evening.

I pull my rented car to the side of a curb several houses down from the place I am supposed to be at. I grab my bag of groceries and leave the car. My shoes clack against the street. Once I get to the house, I study the gravel driveway of the dilapidated house. It seems as if it was once an asphalt driveway. Hunks of rotting and melted asphalt still linger. Weeds protrude through the abscesses. I lock my car one more time. I jingle keys, grip the grocery bag, and head up the old staircase leading to the loft. The wooden stairs swell below my feet, and the screws all whine. I knock. The doorbell hangs in a spider web of wire.

Inside I can hear the loud thump, thump of broken bass speakers. The door creaks and then opens widely. To greet me is a woman I have seen before. Her hair is strawberry blonde, orange near the top, and the tips are teal. I stare into her brown eyes without saying anything. Studying her, I can see her life resting in the cracks that form around her eyes, early wrinkles, healing wounds around her cheeks and near her ears. Obvious abuse. Her shirt is a strap that wraps around her breasts, her nipples protrude through the fabric. With no intention of disguising my gaze, I linger down past her shown belly button. She is wearing shorts, low rise. I can see the bump that is her pubis, also swollen. It is clear to me her shorts are sucked inside her. I believe this is by design. Bruises like bullet holes travel up and down the rest of her legs.

“I am Desmund. It is a pleasure to meet such a beauty,” I say roughly, while I still admire her swollen pelvic bone and slowly follow her body towards her eyes.

One of her legs rise, and she angles her hips and sticks a finger in her beehive hair and says, “My name is Aberdeen, but people just call me dee” Stepping to the side, her right arm sways back as if to say step inside my king, and I being an honest king, oblige.

Inside I can see the television with two fist holes through it. The television surprisingly still plays, a string of lines in odd sorts of colors across its screen however also show. I can see the PlayStation music app very dull behind these broken RGB strings. The song that plays is Angerfist – wolves. I hold my laugh.

On the table is a bag of methamphetamine. It is a dust grey color. One large man snorts a line leaning his head back after he is done and screams loudly and begins bashing his head up and down in unison with the music. The other man sitting beside him follows along and snorts a line. I do not know these two men. The couch they sit on is black, with many stains and pieces of cotton protruding through rips all over it.

I step inside and close the door. Aberdeen walks into the kitchen to my left, away from the table of meth. I, with the bag in hand, follow her to the kitchen. I notice how she lifts her spandex shorts up wildly; obviously, the fabric squeezes between her ass cheeks. I stare, and she turns around, and I make it evident that I am staring, and when I do look back up to her eyes, she smirks.

“I don’t know what you got in that bag, but you can put it here,” slapping the counter. The men back on the couch woo again, and one of them smashes the table violently. I do not stir. Instead, I calmly lift the bag and dump the contents out on the table.

Bocconcini, French bread, genoa salami, prosciutto, and one jar of artichoke hearts and another of beets comes out. I reach inside the bag and pull out long skewers.

“Fancy,” Aberdeen says plainly and goes to the fridge and bends over and asks, “what do you want.”

“I’ll take a beer, doesn’t matter which.”

“Perfect,” she says, grabbing one out of the fridge, twisting the cap, and she tosses it in the garbage and slaps a bud light down on the table.

I take a sip and say, “thank you,” I take another sip and ask, “do you have a large plate?”

She tells me that this isn’t her house and begins to look around the kitchen, and I stare at the table of methamphetamine and realize this will all be much easier than I expected. Suddenly, through blaring music, I can hear a baby’s cries. I do not stir. A door opens from somewhere beyond the television at the far end of the loft, and two people come walking out. From the other side of the apartment, the man screams, “Desmond!” and runs over to me. The woman strolls behind him.

This is the most critical moment.

I stare at the woman as she approaches, her body is sculpted from diamond and gold, but her face is like a mud pit.

“This is my future wife, Hanah,” the man says, pointing towards the woman beside him, and I extend my hand out towards her and say, “it is nice to finally meet you. I have heard great things.”

She looks at me with a disguised smile and says, “same to you.”

I stare at the man for a long time with a straight face, something I have done with him since we were young men. Now, it has been a very long time since I have seen my old friend, but I hope he catches on. I stare at him.

He stares back with a straight face, and eventually, I break. This is on purpose. His sunken face cracks as mine breaks into a smile, and I say, “how do you always beat me, Charles?”

“Cause you’re soft, Des,” and he blurts out hearty laughs, and I wrap around him, giving him a long hug. Once we separate, he points over to Aberdeen and says, “this is Aberdeen, my step-sister,” and he turns away right after before she has a chance to respond; this is when I see Hanah give her a sideways glance.

This is something I expected.

“Let’s have a beer,” breaking the cold that just swallowed the room. I extend mine up and wait for Charles and Hanah to get theirs. We cheer, and the bottles cling, and we all indulge in a very long sip.

Charles tells me about the baby in the other room, saying that it is from a previous relationship. I tell Hanah that she is a strong woman for taking on two babies, one being Charles. Aberdeen helped me prepare the meat skewers topped with artichoke hearts and bocconcini. I finish my beer and ask for another one once the appetizers I decided to bring are finished being made. The men in the background on the couch smash the table, and the screen skips as it does, showing a display of different colors like a rainbow in a fit of seizure. I ask Charles if we should invite them over to have some, but he tells me those guys don’t eat food yet, entering the third day of a binge. I ask Charles why they would be allowed here with the baby, and he tells me they are his dad’s friends and that he can’t kick them out.

I knew this.

This is my design.

“How is the old man,” I ask as if it doesn’t matter, but it does.

Charles finishes his almost complete beer in one go and grabs a skewer. Taking a long look at Aberdeen after. “He’s the same”

“Oh, so you guys still live in the”

“Yup,” Charles says before I finish

“Your mom?”

“She didn’t beat cancer.”

“Stepmom”

Charles once again looks at Aberdeen, and I look at Aberdeen as well, and I can see the sadness on her face. It rests there, like a gravestone she carries with the dwindling strength of her neck. “She’s ight.”

I want to make it lighter; I know what is happening, but I need it to stay here, stay here in this thick recess of darkening thoughts, “You have any whiskey?” I ask

“I do, get it, Dee,” Charles whips, and I can see her cringe against the leather of his tongue, and I whiten my knuckles.

I tell him to pour us out four shots, and he says, “not Dee. She needs to take care of the baby.”

I have a few things I would like to say here, but I decided not to.

Once the shots are poured, we all take them. Then I demand another in intensity, knowing he will take the bait, and he does, and we do another, and I again, ask for another, and then again another, and he refuses, and I say, “oh don’t be like your dad” and I can see the anger, contorting across his face like an ant dying under the heat of the pale sun.

“Fine,” he says, grabbing the bottle from Dee’s hands, and he takes a long chug. I see him down at least four- or five-seconds worth of alcohol afterward, his face recoils, and his reflex curdles.

I say, “he’s made you soft, has he” about his dad again. So I snag the bottle from him, and while his face muscles hold back wads of vomit, I put the bottleneck in my mouth, take one small sip, I clog the hole with my tongue and begin to make the sound of chugging, and I do this for six or seven seconds and slam the bottle on the table.

I hold my face and say, “time didn’t weaken me.”

He slaps my back and says, “you haven’t changed a bit, you sick fuck.”

I look at him with eyes I hardly ever reveal, and I tell him flatly, “The only thing that changes is what I choose to change.”

It is a natural reaction in people to flee, flee from that which scares them. Darwin calls this survival of the fittest, except most people, lack, which is the most suitable attribute for survival. I can see it in him. Behind his eyes, behind the glare of the whiskey, his response.

I break into a smile and ask, “Can I use your bathroom.”

He laughs, “yes, of course, granny.”

I smile and walk towards it; when my back is turned, my smile sucks into my face, and it becomes calm, like that of a smooth flowing river.

I run the sink in the bathroom and vomit all the whiskey out while I flush the toilet. I then wipe everything down, wiping away any trace that I may leave of my being there.

I open the door and step out of the bathroom, I nod at the two men on the couch, and they study my clothes and burst into laughs, as if I am so out of place, I might as well not exist. Then, I see Charles walking over to the table filled with meth. Mumbling under his breath that he needs to straighten out.

I look at Aberdeen and then Hanna.

I watch as Charles snorts an icy line of meth and cock his head back as if he was just shot under the chin with a gun, and the bullet flew through the top of his skull. I asked him if he would like to smoke outside with me alone to catch up. Trembling with energy, he agrees. Once we are out alone, I give him one of my Dunhill’s and take one for myself. I light mine and his up, and I can see the cigarette shaking against his lips.

I wonder how blatantly I can talk to him now, how much can I give away without his noticing, so I ask at first, how come Aberdeen must take care of the baby? And he tells me that she is the most responsible. I say that I can see that clearly, and we both laugh. I ask him how his father is really doing, and he tells me that he hates him so much, and he wishes he were dead. I ask him why he lets his father beat him up, and he curdles into himself. I can see that old type of rage engulf his soul. I can see how high he is. I ask him why his stepmom told his father to rape Aberdeen.

He looks at me and is frozen, unsure of what to say. He seems as if all at once he was overburdened with shame but also as if enormous pressure was releasing from inside his bones, gripping the splintered wood that makes up the railing to the stairs; he tells me that his stepmother is worse than his dad is, and that she has done worse things to Aberdeen and that I couldn’t fathom any of it.

I tell him that he shouldn’t live with this guilt and negativity. I tell him there is a way to escape all this suffering. I say to him that he could be anything in the world, anything at all, if his father and stepmother were no longer alive. He tells me that he wishes he could kill them, and I tell him, while I grip his shoulder, that he should do it and take revenge on the people who ruined his life. I say to him that he should do it tonight, and he should do it, so it looks like a murder-suicide. I ask him if he has a gun, maybe one that his psycho meth-addicted dealer father gave him or that he stole, and he tells me with a smile that he does have one. I tell him to be a man, I tell him to come with me and end his suffering, and we should do it now. I can see him shaking under the electricity of the Meth and the alcohol, and he looks up at me with pupils bigger than marbles, and he says he would get caught. I tell him that I already thought about that, and everyone here right now is your alibi, including myself. I tell him five people will say he was here all night long, making it impossible for him to get caught. I told him he should write a note, pretending to be his father, saying that he couldn’t live with this life anymore and had to take revenge. I tell him it’s the perfect plan, and he will inherit everything his father owns. I can see it along his skin, how he is playing everything in his head over and over. He looks up at me and asks when we go. I tell him we go right now and say we need to go to the store to get coke and chips. Your father lives close, and everything makes sense.

I put out my cigarette with my thumb and finger and put the but in my pocket. In my other bag, I pull out a folded pair of gloves. I tell him to go inside and get the gun and the paper, and I will drive his car. He tells me that he loves me. I smile and ask him to hurry. I can hear people inside asking him where he is going, and he says that he is going to the store to get chips and that he will be back in twenty minutes. When he gets back outside, I tell him that was perfect and that he is a natural. I put on my gloves, and we get into his car, and I drive. I know exactly where his father lives.

Once we are at the house, I question, “what is the plan.”

“We leave the car running, sneak inside” he snorts a pile of meth out of his palm and wipes it on his jeans “we go into his room and shoot them both while they sleep, placing the note I wrote on his chest, and I put the gun in his hand, and we leave.”

“Amazing,” I tell him. I grab his head and pull it towards mine, and I place my forehead on his. I tell him we can do this and that his father needs to pay for taking away everything he could have become. When he looks back at me, his once blue eyes are entirely black.

I leave the car running and tell him to stay low and smooth. We go up to the house’s front door, and he uses his key to get inside. Once we are in, we stay low and quiet, making sure not to make too much noise. Quietly up the steps now, we can hear moaning and sex coming from the upstairs room. Charles seems nervous, and I tell him it will be over soon. We continue up the steps and gently open the door. The television plays incredibly violent porn, and the father and the stepmom sleep on the bed. They are both naked with no covering of sheets.

I tell him he needs to do this. That now is the time, I ask him to take some more crank, and he nods his head up and down quickly and reaches in his pocket and with his two fingers snorting some up his nose. In the rush, starting at his feet, travelling up his chest into his neck, then to his brain, Charles opens the door and creeps inside the room. The stepmom is on her chest and stomach face to the side of a pillow, crust lines her mouth. The father sleeps on his back, meth erection pointed to the ceiling. The light from the television flashes them in whites and creams and then darkness and white light and blues and pinks. The girl on the screen moans loudly. I can hear Charles muttering to himself as he approaches the bed. Muttering and muttering. I tell him to be quiet, or he will wake them. Charles keeps on saying things to himself, high out of his mind. Then he slowly raises the gun up to his shoulders and aims the pistol at his stepmom.

I tell him to do it.

I say this is the way to his salvation, and he will only find peace after this.

I tell him loudly to do it. Do it now.

And that is when Charles’s father wakes.

And in his waking eyes, I see him staring at Charles, and I see shock play over his face, which then turns to anger, and his father screams at Charles. He yells, “You don’t have the balls, fruit bag.”

When the stepmom turns over in her bed, she is lined up and down with track marks, her breasts are bruised. The light from the television continues to flash them with bright white light, and then darkness and then orange and green, and the girl on TV is moaning quickly now.

The stepmom screams once she sees the gun in Charles’s hand, and that is when the firearm fills the room with the sound of steel popping under heat, a mist of red splatters across the back of the wall behind the stepmother and then two more into his father. The red mist plays in the air like the light of stars in the night sky playing in the eyes. The girl on the television is squealing now.

Nothing but that is heard in the room, and my ears ring softly.

I tell Charles to snap out of it and to hurry up.

For a few seconds, he stares at the leaking bullet holes in these people he has just killed. I tell him to snap out of it again and to hurry the fuck up. He pulls out the note from his pocket, runs to the corpse, places it on his chest, and then the gun in his hand. I tell him that everything will be okay and that he needs to hurry up. He rushes past me and down the stairs; when he is all the way down the stairs and entirely out of sight, I go inside the room.

Driving back in the car, Charles is shaking, mumbling under his breath that they know they will come for him and that sinners go to hell, and he will burn for eternity in fire. I tell him that God isn’t real and that the bible was written by a specific group of men to control people and that there is no evidence of Jesus ever having existed besides certain scholars who were placed in roles to prove his legitimacy. He seems calmed by this and puts the rest of his Meth on a piece of paper; he takes out the glove compartment and brings it to his face, snorts a line, and tells me that he never gets addicted. The reason why he tells me is that he never bends down to snort it. Instead, he always brings it up to him. He never bows to the drugs, letting them own him; he always brings it up to his level, making it come to him. He tells me about the guys in the house and how they bend down to snort it, and that means they are idiots. That’s why they are hooked.

I tell him that logic is sound, and he is brilliant for thinking of it that way. Once we get back to the house and pull in the driveway, I ask him what we say why we never got the chips; he tells me he’ll just say that he forgot his debit card.

We leave the car and lock the door; I say, “hold on, friend.”

Looking over at me, quickly looking up then behind him, then to both sides, he says, “what what what.”

“You need to act like nothing happened and never speak a word to anyone” I grab the back of his head, pull it into mine again and press my forehead against his.

While looking down and his forehead pressed against mine, he murmurs, “never tell a soul, never tell a soul.”

We walk up the crooked and swollen steps that lead to his loft. Inside, the music is blasting. Aberdeen looks at me when we enter the door, and I look at her. I notice that she has a bottle of cleaner in her hand, bleach, and she has been rubbing things down with it.

The guys on the couch scream, “she is so high; she’s been cleaning non-stop.”

I laugh and nod at Aberdeen, and she bounces back and goes back to wiping the bottle of beer, then the table.

Charles runs to the table, grabs the mirror of meth, and brings it to his face, then he sits down at a chair in front of the two men who were bashing the table before. I still have my gloves on, and drag a chair over, so I am at the side of the table closest to the door. I sit here calmly for a while, thinking about everything that has just transpired, and I look at Charles and wonder if he has any idea what is happening.

I wait for Hanah to sit down next to the two men, and when she does, I look at the four of them. Studying how absent-minded they all are. So lost in the nothingness of their lives. I ask the big guy closest to the remote to turn the volume up, and he says, “rock on, bruh,” and turns the volume up loudly.

I shoot the man closest to me in the face.

Then the next big guy.

Standing up quickly, I pull the trigger one last time into the front of Hanah’s face. The three of them all slump like empty bags of guts. Three clean holes straight through their skulls. All dead. In a better place now.

I point the gun at Charles and tell him to stay seated.

Aberdeen walks up behind me and places her hand on my shoulder.

I asked Charles if he believed there was a heaven and a hell, even after what I said in the car.

I tell him to think about it before he responds.

Looking around, he shakes and trembles. Then, dropping the Meth all over his pants, the floor, and the small glass mirror breaks into tiny pieces on the table.

I asked him if his stepmother ever made him do things he didn’t like.

I tell him that God could be anything and that everything we do in life matters in the end. With all the knowledge available to all the people in the world, it still doesn’t mean there can’t be an all-powerful creator beyond our comprehension.

While he opens his mouth, I stick the gun inside it and shoot a bullet through the top of his skull.

I stand up slowly and wrap Charles’ fingers around the gun, I gently raise the gun and stick it in his mouth and let go of his hand, and it falls from his mouth to his lap naturally.

I turn around and tell Aberdeen that I love her. I kiss her lips. She tells me everything has been wiped down. I rummage around the dead bodies on the couch and ask Aberdeen for the passwords she acquired all night for me. I deleted the messages that had anything to do with us, including the ones on Charles’ phone. I pull the note out of my pocket that Charles himself wrote earlier, place it in his hands, and clench his fist around it. His hand plummets to the side of his cadaver. I turn down the music and tell Aberdeen to get her things, including the grocery bag I came with and all the food and the jars I brought. I take off my worn-down, ill-fitting shoes and place them on Charles’s feet. They fit perfectly as they are his size.

Aberdeen and I walk away from the house, leaving the baby inside.

Once down the street, we get inside the rental and turn it on. Drive all the way out of town and back to the apartment building where my sister and I live. On the way, I ask Aberdeen if she took the bus here with cash, as we talked about, and that she wore glasses and her hood the whole time, and she tells me that she did and that she loves me. Placing her hand on my upper thigh. We sneak back inside through the window and change our clothes to our matching onesie pajamas at the apartment.

Opening the door where we hear the television playing the Christmas movie Mr. Grinch even though it is September. My sister and her boyfriend are sitting on the couch still. I walk into the kitchen, and I ask them if they want another beer, and her boyfriend tells me they would love one.