Read Online In the Nick of Time by Tiana Laveen - Free Book Online Page A

long gone and the studio reporter was back on the air, a glum look on her sullen face…
    No…Noooo…Noooo!
    “Noooooo! Not again! It’s happening AGAIN!!! No!!!!”
    “Nick, let me call ya back. I gotta go!” Tomas blurted.
    The call went dead…
    D e a d…
    Like bricks to skulls…
    Like Mom in her grave…
    Like little babies thrown down from buildings…
    D e a d…
    Like his evil blue eyes…
    Like his nonexistent soul…
    Like the place where a heart beat slow and steady, rather than hard, irregular, and fast from an early evening of premium narcotic abuse chased with expensive Russian Vodka.
    … And don’t forget the pretty Patron…
    Dead.
    You’re dead too, Nick…
    You sorry son of a bitch… You should be dead! It should be YOU!
    Monster!
    He crawled back towards his bed as a thin trail of slobber streamed out from between his rubbery lips. He swiped at it, smearing it across his jaw, and gripped his bed sheets, trying to pull himself up as if they were a rope of mercy. Grunting along the way, he fought and fought, trying to do the simplest of tasks. His legs were giving out, weak, barely able to bend, turn or move. His six foot three body became dead weight. Every fiber of his being worked against him, laughing, calling him names, dipping itself in something dark and sticky, making him loathe every hair on his body and every bone wrapped beneath the surface, too…
    He tried and tried to move past the slush of the drugs running marathons within his cranium, until several attempts later, he was finally lying in the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Meanwhile, the newscaster went on and on about the nightmare that had played out on repeat. The bitch wouldn’t shut the hell up and her mouth—her words—became the soundtrack to his self-imposed death sentence. He almost swallowed his own damn tongue as phlegm and spit pooled in the back of his throat, and more beads of perspiration ran down his sweaty face then collected in his eardrums like tiny cups for communion.
    Be blessed, young man…
    Friendly words from yesteryear, shared from an old priest who’d worn his Bible against his ribcage like a beating heart.
    Blessed? No! I’m cursed!
    I could have…stopped him. Eric listened to me… I knew Eric… Eric did what I said…
    That little boy is gone. He’s dead… No!
    He screamed in his head, pulling at his hair, damn near jerking the strands clean out, leaving behind only bloody stumps. Wallowing in stiff, unyielding guilt and a body coated in his own pore-made fluid, he remained prisoner to his carcass… the same bones the cool air had had their way with earlier in the day. The same bones that moved and maneuvered about in tight alleyways, chasing desperados, and nabbing them more times than not. It was only a matter of time before his addiction caught up with him, but…he’d had a good run. He kept the shit under the glaring radar, his dirty little, fingerprint smudged secrets of boozing it up, snorting it up, fucking it up, fucking it up good, too. He made excuses for it, promised himself he’d seek help. But, he never did. No, that would have been a pussy move, and he’d sworn he was a motherfucking outlaw…
    And what a sad outlaw he was. Intoxicated, high as a fucking Goodyear blimp and stinking with old sweat. He hated himself, inside and out, wished he could disappear right that fucking second.
    I should fuckin’ kill myself… do everyone a favor.
    He looked over at his holster, the damn gun inside of it… It would be easy, a piece of German chocolate cake…
    Pussy move?
    Outlaw move?
    He was told suicide was for pussies. You had to stick this shit out, wait until you got to the last damn chapter, paragraph, sentence, and period. You had to earn your way through like you were paying fucking dues for not just yourself, but a gang load of motherfuckers! You had to accept the cards you were dealt, call bluff and declare yourself a winner and run that shit into the ground like seeds into