Kezzie of Babylon

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-473-8

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-472-1

Kezzie of Babylon copyright © 2015

by Jamie Mason

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by David Walker

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

- Revelations 6:9

His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead.

- James Joyce

Dogs never bite me. Just humans.

- Marilyn Monroe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK I: HOW IT ENDED

Chapter 1. Life is a Four-Letter Word

Chapter 2. Too Good to be True

Chapter 3. Poison Apples

Chapter 4. Kezzie

Chapter 5. When the going gets weird …

Chapter 6. Buzz

Chapter 7. … the weird turn pro.

BOOK II: HOW IT BEGAN

Chapter 8. Church

Chapter 9. Deacon

Chapter 10. More Awful Shit

Chapter 11. Even More Awful Shit

Chapter 12. Just a Phase

Chapter 13. Hauling Ass out of Dodge

Chapter 14. Shooting the Dead

Afterword

About the Author

BOOK I

HOW IT ENDED

Chapter 1. Life is a Four-Letter Word

Never fall in love with a stripper. I did. Bad idea. I knew better at the time but pretended not to. I was doing a lot of that back then – pretending. Pretending, for instance, that my buddy Frankenstein and I weren’t into this one dealer for a lot of money, that I’d probably win the lottery soon and fix all our problems, and that this girl I’d hooked up with wasn’t an absolute bitch. A truly rotten human being, the sort of person you could never realistically fall in love with, but I had. She made my life miserable and I should have known better because, you know, strippers.

It all started with the drugs. Most things in my life do.

* * *

Okay, I’m going to assume you have a basic knowledge of street drugs. Like, I’m guessing you’ve probably smoked pot. Hell, you probably still do. Everyone does. This is Vancouver Island, after all. I’m getting off topic. My point is: to understand this story, you’re going to have to know a little about drugs. If not, go do some research. Like, go get high or something. Right now. Take your time. I’ll wait here ’til you get back.

All set? Okay, so you’re a grownup who realizes that most people do drugs, and that most relationships in life are about finding, scoring, and using drugs (this is basic shit everyone knows), and that we decide who we’re going to hang out with based on the kind of drugs they use and can help us obtain. This is what people mean when they talk about friends sharing common interests.

You know how sometimes when you’re looking for a particular drug you end up having to spend a lot of time around people you don’t really like, or owing money to people who get really upset when you can’t pay them back? You know, those really impatient people? And how when you can’t avoid them any longer you end up having to do them a favor, usually something unpleasant or dangerous or both? Well that’s how I ended up hiding here in the weeds by the BC Hydro shunt yard. Because this guy we owe money to asked (really politely) if we could steal him a couple of meters of copper wire, which is really no fucking big deal.

Frankenstein is waiting in the car. All I really have to do is climb this fence, snip some wire, climb back out, get it to my special friend so he can sell it to redeem the money we owe him, then go home and get high. In other words, the day will get back to its regularly scheduled programming in about an hour or so. All I have to do is get from now to then without becoming too wrapped up with what happens in between.

That’s the plan, anyway. Problem is, this place is crawling with mobile security coverage. A rent-a-cop drives by regularly. The smart thing would have been to spend the night before parked nearby so we could observe the rent-a-cop’s schedule. However, when I suggested that to our special friend he disagreed, saying that’s not his fucking problem and he just wants his copper wire tonight or else, so I have to improvise.

The security car is the same one we kept an eye out for when helping ourselves to bags of feed from the compound of the farm store — a white Ford Crown Victoria with search lights set up on the roof like phony cop twirlers and a blue stripe down the side with the words VALLEY SECURITY printed in white. You’d recognize it a mile off and I do, right now, approaching from up the street.

I shoot Frankenstein a look. She’s hunkered down in the driver’s seat so that even fifty yards away I can’t see her over the dashboard. The security car pauses at the shunt yard gate and the driver parks and picks up a clipboard. He checks his watch, makes a notation, then drives on. I wait three minutes before moving toward the fence. I glance back to make eye contact with Frankenstein and see her waving her arms and pointing and jabbing the air with a finger. A single whoop from a siren splits the night. I dive face-down into the weeds, thinking: busted I’m busted oh fuck I’m busted. But when there’s no searchlight, no voice demanding I freeze I look up and — There! Fucking thing is parked right across the street, tucked up into an access road, partially concealed by someone’s hedge. It’s been parked there all along. Waiting? For what?

The cop car lights up and sprays gravels as it peels out, sirens shrieking, disappearing into the darkness up the street.

I wait another two minutes. Better safe than sorry. I am rolling to my knees when my cell rings. With a curse I flop back down and haul it out of my side pocket. Glance at the display. Frankenstein. I answer and am all like:

Dude. What the fuck?

Zack, you planning to hop that fence anytime soon? ’Cuz they say another ice age is coming ...

Fuck off, Frankie! I was just about ready to go!

So go, fucknuts! I need to get home and cut some fat lines!

I hang up on her, jam the phone back in my pocket and stand. Time to quit screwing around. I’m fidgeting, of course. Sweating. So I’d be clear-headed when we did this, I skipped my usual regimen of drugs and booze and spent the day pacing back and forth, smacking my fist into my palm, waiting for night to fall. It was fucking agony. What kind of a world is that to live in, anyway? Time to seize the initiative, handle this bitch and get home to my stash. I reach out and grasp the fence the same instant Frankenstein blasts her horn.

Jesus!

And there it comes, skating out of the darkness, the white Crown Victoria with the blue stripe. Again! Within like, what, eleven minutes? I’m cursing fate right now, cursing the fate that’s keeping me from my stash waiting there at home in its handsome wooden box on the edge of coffee table and I’m all, like just get me home. Now. I get a grip on myself and remember the benefits, specifically working knees, of giving my special friend what he’s asked for, so once the car’s gone, I stand, screw up my courage and run at the fence.

I don’t fuck around this time. No slow crawl up the rippling mesh to try and mask the noise. No, man, I’m going full-tilt balls-to-the-wall in a mad scramble, frost fence clashing and sawing under my weight, barbed wire jangling up top. Within a few seconds I can reach out and grasp a section between two spikes and feel it give under my weight. I grit my teeth. Haul, and another whoop.

I freeze.

Siren?

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a tide of red wash the street. I hear the click that signals the opening of a siren speaker and the rest of my night passes before me in a flash: halt, freeze! … a brief chase and capture … a ride to the station … the cold cement of a jail cell bench under my butt … a long night …

I release the fence and plunge down, hitting the ground with a hard jolt. Ice claws my spine and my reptile brain takes over. I roll, legs pumping, rise and run just as the siren roars to life. From a creeping start level with the shunt yard gate, the police car hurtles past me, rocking its lights and party noises, sweeping around the far edge of the yard to vanish into shadowy distance.

Fear claws me. What if I’d been in there when they drove by? The reptile brain takes over again and I sprint to where Frankenstein is parked.

Forget this! My teeth are chattering. I haul open the passenger door. Get us the fuck out of here!

* * *

I started all this by talking about strippers, about how you should never fall in love with one. I’m coming to that.

So I’m all congratulating myself for not taking any unnecessary chances as we’re speeding along the highway toward the harbor. Knowing when to say enough is enough and end the job is the mark of a true professional. Obviously, the copper wire gambit is too risky. So here’s what I figure, I figure I can cover what I owe and —

Dude! Frankenstein takes a hand off the wheel and punches my shoulder, which hurts because she’s six-feet-five. How are we gonna pay Alan? Huh? She punches me again. How?

I’m gonna sell my dad’s camera equipment, I reply. Or better yet, I’ll let Alan have it all. He’ll get a better price for it than I can.

Dude. That’s sacrilegious. Your father was, like, one of the top photographers in Western Canada!

Gee, REALLY? Thanks for reminding me, Frankie. Because I’ve only heard that every single day of my entire fucking life and I might, like, have totally forgotten about it by now if you hadn’t mentioned it.

Frankenstein squares her jaw and shoots me an angry glance, on the point of objecting to my tone, of telling me she doesn’t appreciate being spoken to that way and that I better watch it or lose the last friend I’ve got. She doesn’t. Instead she reaches out very angrily and switches on the CD player. The CD we were listening to floats back through the speakers in mid-song. Frank Sinatra. Her favorite.

You upset with me? I ask.

She says nothing. Which is really upsetting. I stare through the windshield and concentrate on the essentials. Drugs: we’ll be home soon, so we can top up. Next? Safety: we’ll break out Dad’s camera equipment and load it into the car for transport to Alan’s. Hand it over. Come home. And chillax.

There’s only the three of us in our house: me, Frankenstein, and Krystal. We all use, though no one deals, so we don’t have people pounding on our doors at all hours of the day and night. Once I get home I know I’m safe. I look forward to that moment when the door is closed and the candles lit and me and Krystal have broken out with the weed and the wine and maybe a line or two of good coke. That moment when we first light up and relax, while Frankenstein maybe blasts metal or punches the wall or masturbates loudly in her room next door. It will come once I get on the other side of this mess.

The front door is open when Frankenstein pulls up at the curb and the light in the living room is off. Weird. I slip out of the car. There is an odd stillness about the house. The door swings wide on a gust of wind as I approach up the walkway. Stepping into the living room, I switch on the light.

Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, including my stash box on the coffee table.

Krystal?

Our bedroom door is open.

I keep telling myself there’s nothing to worry about, that she’s passed out in bed, that I’ll peer in and see a familiar lump under the blankets and that after I’m done pulling Dad’s camera equipment out of the closet and selling it, I can crawl in beside that lump and be warm and comfortable again. I keep telling myself that, even as I push open the door and see by the light crawling diagonally across the duvet from the living room lamp that there is no lump. And that the stuff on her side of the room is —

gone?

Gone. The closet door is open. I cross the room in two steps, pull it wide, flick on the closet light. The two leather carrying cases containing Dad’s camera equipment have vanished, too.

Never fall in love with a stripper.

* * *

We’re basically fucked!

We’ve taken refuge in a McDonald’s in Colwood. Frankenstein glares across the table at me as a slow ooze of late night customers comes and goes, a few lonely souls pausing long enough to sit by themselves at tables and eat, their stays brief compared to ours because we are deliberately wasting time.

Alan, Frankie says quietly, is going to totally fucking kill us.

I stare at my cell phone. Alan’s number is on speed dial and he always answers by the second ring. I was supposed to be at his place half an hour ago.

What the fuck are we gonna do? I can tell Frankenstein is growing agitated because she’s drumming her fingers, a major red flag to anyone who knows her. What are we gonna do, huh? What are we gonna do?

Now she’s repeating herself. Another bad sign.

Okay, listen, Frankie. We’re in over our heads. We’ll have to tell Alan the truth: we couldn’t grab the wire because the shunt yard was too heavily guarded. Then we’ll ask if he has any other jobs for us, anything else we can do.

Frankenstein is listening, fingers still drumming , though more slowly now. That angry red haze behind her eyes dissolves.

Whatever it is this time we have to do it. We can’t fuck up. We can’t—

My phone rings.

* * *

There are no thugs waiting to jump us on Alan’s porch. And there’s no hint in Alan’s behavior that he is the slightest bit pissed off. Alan is his usual placid self, polite but distant. It’s unnerving.

He blinks owlishly behind narrow rectangular glasses. Stepping back to pull open the front door, he says I expected you here an hour ago.

I cut right to the chase. Fucking security guards, cops, driving back and forth in front of the shunt yard. It was nuts, like a convention. There was no way we could get in there.

I. See.

Alan examines me for a good long while, as if deciding what to do with us. I know that the presence of Frankie, my own personal goon, doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to him because Alan’s reputation is very much for being a certain kind of guy, a very specific type; the kind who, once he’s made up his mind about you, never looks back. That makes Alan more dangerous than three-quarters of the big dealers in this city because with him, once you’re out, you’re out, and nothing is ever going to change his mind. Now that I think about it, I’ve never heard anyone talk about his enemies. Which is unsettling.

Alan pads over to the couch, slippers slapping the floor, and flops down. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his housecoat pocket. Sit, he says and lights up. He takes a deep drag and blows it out while staring at the ceiling.

Let’s see now... He continues staring upward as he speaks. "You’re into me for five large. A few meters of that wiring I could have sold tonight, only tonight, for four thousand, which I was prepared to