Short Story Series Vol 1: Kentucky Avenue Part 2.

The Ogre’s Massive hands gripped my shoulders before I could even smell his stink; the coffee must have hid the vile sent. How someone that fucking big could move so god damn quietly I’ll never understand, but there he was all 6’8 350 pounds of ‘em. With his fucking oven mitts squeezing my small shoulders. The Golem.

“Niko, we have been missing you round the rooster; you don’t call you don’t write, some people might think you’ve been ducking us.”

That voice wasn’t from the Golem, no, too many words strung together, and with a drawl of man who had seen far too many john wayne flicks. The Left Hand, the fucking Shark himself: ‘Sick’ Ike Hoffmen, or as he would tell you ‘Slick.’ But we knew better. We knew why. Twisted in the worst ways possible, and sharp as the Bowie knife permanently attached to his hip. As soon as I heard his velvet tone I wished it was just the Golem and his fucking mitts I had to deal with.

“One might go so far as to believe that the absence of your rather garrulous nature could be and affront to our overwhelmingly charitable employer, wouldn’t you agree?”

He loved it. Lived for it. Making people squirm. Probably enjoyed this part more than actually cutting into the flesh of all those poor bastards that happened to end up on the wrong side of that knife. That knife that had taken so many before me, and would most likely take many more after. Sick Ike.

I spun around on my stool grinning from ear to ear, I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

“Ahh well you know me Ike, just caught up in another big plan that’ll change the world!”

He laughed. Like a fucking jackal, he laughed, tall and thin, though he looked small next to the beast, but he was at least a head taller than me. His suit tailored but beat, tie thin, hair slicked. Man looked like the offspring of a snake and a poet. Scared shitless as I was I still couldn’t understand why he sent them. The Left Hand, and the Golem? Why both? Why either? Was I big game? No. I’d fucked up sure but nothing warranting this or so I thought.

“Be that as it may Nikolas, you have a debt, a debt that is considerably over due, or maybe you forgot the bet you placed with us a little over three weeks ago?”

“There a problem here?”

His voice like a gunshot. Duke. I am delivered, well, at least for now.

“No problem here,”

Their eyes didn’t move from my face, but they knew who was there, and I suddenly realized why he sent them.

“Just reminding our dear boy Nikolas here of his current obligation to our good hearted employer.”

“That right?”

“Mhhm, in fact why don’t you and Nicky here come by the Rooster, this afternoon, say round four? He would greatly appreciate it.”

“Well thank you for the invitation, but I think, me and Nick here will take a pass, and you can tell your employer the same thing I told him last time; stick it.”

The Jackal laughed again.

“Well that’s all well and good but I think you should think long and hard about my offer before you come to a decision. Maybe you would be best served to have nice long chat about it with your little friend here,”

Fuck you, I ain’t little.

“Something tells me you may reconsider.”

Their eyes now locked.  Interrupted by our own personal god in the machine. Kris.

“Last I checked Mister Hoffman we’re all paid up here, and haven’t missed a payment in well ever. So I believe that gives me the added bonus of never having witness you and your friends in, or anywhere near, my establishment. So, if you would kindly get the hell out of my restaurant I would be so very grateful.”

“You are exactly right M’am, we have over stepped our bounds egregiously and for that you have my deepest and upmost apologies.”

He Bowed.

“We were just leaving; you gentlemen have a nice day,”

His eyes then cut to Duke.

“I get the feeling we’ll be seeing each other again real soon.”

 And he slithered his way through the door with a strange and maddening grace, but the Golem lingered. He starred right through me, and I never felt more small in my entire life then when his cold dark eyes looked into me. Nothing. Nothing. His eyes –so cold- nothing was there- nothing. I didn’t know why it was so familiar, so similar to something I had seen many times before. Why couldn’t I place it? That look of emptiness. Of nothingness. Then he moved between us and I knew. How could I not? Duke. It was that same look I would see on his face when I would lose him mid-sentence. When I would question if I really even knew him at all. What did I know? What did I really know? Nothing. Nothing. The beast lingered a bit more before his keeper came and pulled him off into the sunlight. I really don’t know who would have won if it came down to it, the Golem was legend sure, and the size of a house, but Duke…he had a fire inside him, a monster of his own, a werewolf, with a head like cement.

Truth be told in that moment I was more scared of Duke then any of the his lackeys.

Kris collapsed against the counter terrified. Her Momma bear facade dropped. She knew what that visit meant, and it was anything but good. “Either of you two wanna tell me what that was about? Or am I better off not knowing?”

“Nick, outside now.”

Fuck.

We walked to the alley way out back and I turned to give my best defense for my sins, but before I could speak a word I had been picked up by my jacket and pinned to the brick like I was a poster for some shit hip band advertising two for one PBR. I fucking hate those bands.

“What did you do?!”

Terrified.

“What did you do Nick? What did you do?”

I couldn’t even look at him. Never in my life had I seen him this way…not angry… hurt.

“It was just one bet Duke I swear it was just one bet, Garcia was plus 500, how was a supposed to pass that up? I figured he had a good camp he looked fast and strong like a few years back. How the fuck was I supposed to know he was going in with a tweaked shoulder? How was I supposed to know he would barely lay a shot on Patterson? Huh?”

“You little fucking idiot, you bet Garcia over Patterson? How stupid are you? The mother fuckers never lost a fight! Why are you so fucking stupid? How many times? How many times have I told you? You stay the fuck away from the Rooster!”

He put me down.

“Duke I am so sorry alright, but I was doing this for us, so we could get the fuck out of here, so we could do something for us!”

“How much?”

“Duke…”

“How. Much.”

I stared into the dirt.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve grand?”

I nodded.

“Where the fuck do you get the balls to bet twelve fucking grand?”

My eyes didn’t leave the safe patch of dirt.

“He owns you now. You know that right? He fucking owns you; out right.”

“I fucked up alright? I’m sorry…I’m so sorry Duke… I just wanted to do something big…something great.”

“We are not waiting till four; we are going to fix this right now.”

 “Come on Duke lets just skip town right? I mean fuck this place right? We’ve wanted to bail for years right? Let’s just go! You and me man, we’ll hit the road, head west, see the ocean the gran-.”

“Shut up! Don’t you get it? There’s no where you can go! This isn’t some small town Shylock you fucked with. There is no crevice you could hide yourself away in that he wont find you and pull your tongue out through your fucking nose!”

“I don’t really think that is physically possible…”

“SHUT UP! You can not turn and run from something like this Nick; you have to face it. Head on. Now, let’s go.”

And so we walked, we walked and I felt my stomach in my chucks. Never in my life had I been so afraid of what was to come. The reality of what I had gotten myself into, had now gotten us into, had started to sink in and I was truly, terrified. Death row. The long walk to the electric chair. I truly have never been more fucked than I was in this moment. It was as though every bad thing I have ever put off in my life, every problem I had ever brushed aside , every bad deal I’d ever made was finally coming to collect. Like a monster that had grown too big for the bed and too tall for the closet. Impending doom was all I could feel and my mind began to race. How had I put it off this long? How did I think I would get away with it? Or better yet why? Because I always had before? Because something or someone had had always been there to save my neck when it was on the block? And now it was happening all over again, but this time I’d roped in someone I had never wanted to hurt. That was exactly what I had done. I was brought back to reality by the sudden and uplifting reminder of beauty. It’ll do that to you, beauty. She’ll distract you just long enough, so you forget about all your troubles and leave you, for just a few moments, without a care in the world. There weren’t a lot of beautiful parts to this town, sure the right broad for the right price was pretty enough, but nothing truly beautiful. Nothing that stopped you still and caused an epiphany of an infallible truth - that before you, right there in that instant, stands beauty. True, unmistakable, irrevocable beauty – well almost nothing.

The 1964 ford falcon gleamed in the midday light. Black steel and blood red leather encompassed the crowded city block. There was nothing else, only it. Undeniable. True beauty. His pride and Joy. He spun the keys on his finger just as he always did, as though he knew a truth the rest of us never would, but I knew. I knew what stood before me was so much more than just a combination of gears and metal. It was tangible evidence of what Duke had hoped to eradicate living deep inside him. Love. The falcon was his birth right; gambled away before he could sit behind the wheel a man. So at 15 a full two years after his old man was shot to death, he walked into the Rooster with a stack of cash, and won it back in 8 hands, Jacks over Sevens. It was everything to him. Course if you asked he’d smile and say

“It’s just a car.”

But I knew better, I knew the look on his as he swung those keys. It was the same look he had on the first day I saw him; sitting on his pops lap steering, with the old man’s foot on the gas. Love.

“Get in.”

The distraction was gone. Beauty no more. Just silence. No love on Duke’s face, no…no anything. Just silence. I looked to the windows and I looked to the streets. The sidewalks littered with long-haired dreamers and cynics alike. Scammers, hustlers, whores, and harlots. Atlas’ and the Pucks. The down trotted and the uplifted. The 15 hour day, store clerk, father of four. The trial lawyer. The pan handler. I looked to all of them and I thought of all their individual dreams, their separate lives, and I grew sad for all the worlds I would never know. I saw the street corners where we lost our youth, where we broke bottles, where we hit walk off homers, where we shot burned out cars with bottle rockets, where m80s became artillery fire, and the old Wexler building where…where my mom OD’d. Wexler…that means we’re close. Kentucky Avenue.

There wasn’t a man alive in this town who didn’t know Kentucky Avenue. A place where the cops never came and the devil already knows your dead. You could call it crooked, but that would imply that it was at one point straight. It’s occupation was to live void of law, of societies morals, norms, and values. You could be a priest just three blocks over, and a monster once your feet hit the pavement. It did not care just so long as you paid. When I was young I would make any excuse to come down here. To watch the machine. See the cogs, see them turn. See the darkness fill behind their eyes. Poke the body with a stick. Now I’d give any excuse not to come down here. Even when I placed the bet I tried to do it over the phone, but they made me come in. They made me come here. The Rooster.

The car came to a stop and Duke got out with out a word. I followed. Together we stood out front and stared at the sign of a giant neon rooster.

“The hall of the mountain king.”

“What?”

“Nothing… never thought we’d be here together huh?” I joked.

He didn’t.

“Let’s go.”