In 1986 Shawn was just another sixteen year old kid trying to survive on the ghetto streets of New York. His dad was a white guy that abandoned his pretty Latina mom. Her name was Lita and she was a young, lovely lady that was an illegal immigrant and she worked long hours for cash through a maid cleaning surface. Part time she designed and sewed clothes with dreams of having her own company.
Shawn was her only child and she made sure he focused on school. He received good grades and won a lot of awards on the wrestling and track teams in school. He lifted weights and did mixed martial arts at the corner gym. He had an impressive, muscular physique. He was good looking with dark hair, brown eyes and a full mustache at a young age. He loved his mom and they were good together facing the world.
His mom died in a car accident after his 16th birthday. Lita had no other family in America and Shawn had no guardian. The state social workers wanted to put him in one of their ghetto group homes. Instead Shawn spoke to a local Latino construction contractor that employed illegal immigrants for cash. His name was Ernesto and he hired Shawn.
Over the next six months Shawn proved to be a quick learner and hard worker. Shawn rented a little ghetto apartment for cash. One night while walking back to the work trailer on pay day, Shawn and Ernie were confronted by two ski masked men pointing pistols and demanding money. Ernie didn't argue as he handed over a fat stack of cash. But one of the gunmen fired anyway and Ernie dropped dead with a bullet in the head.
Shawn was stung by a slug chopping his chest. Somehow Shawn still rushed the shooter, clawing off his facemask. Shawn recognized a local black Vice Lord, named Tyrel. The thug slugged Shawn with another bullet to the body and left him dying beside Ernie.
Shawn felt his soul rise and he looked down at his own body. EMTs were working on him as a tunnel of white light ignited the night. He felt an overwhelming urge to enter the light tunnel. But he heard his mom's voice saying it wasn't his time yet.
Abruptly a swirling dark wormhole opened next to Ernie. From that twirling dark tornado three immense entities emerged. They were all walking upright, but their outlines resembled a cross between a grizzly bear, bull, and crocodile. Their forms were composed of dark shadowy smoke, but they clearly had titanic claws and maws filled with formidable teeth. Huge horns hooked from their heads and spikes bristled along their backs and down their long tails. Their eyes burned like glowing coals. The creatures reached into Ernie’s body and scooped his soul out. Ernie’s soul looked like he had while alive, except now he was glowing and partially translucent. Ernie screamed and struggled, but it did him no good. The demons chuckled and rumbled as they carried his squirming and squealing soul back through the wormhole. It slammed shut behind them.
Shawn looked back for his mom, but she was gone, along with the tunnel of light. His soul was sucked back into his body, where he experienced immense sadness at being rejected from the light and a heaviness as his soul was confined in his clumsy, mortal body again. He would spend the rest of his life wondering if he hallucinated, or if he’d really glimpsed what lay beyond death.
When he woke up, he was informed he died for over a minute before being shocked back to life by EMTs. He identified Tyrel as one of the shooters. The cops conducted a manhunt making a series of raids and arrests at the gang's residences and businesses. They didn't locate Tyrel. The local social workers visited Shawn in the hospital to tell him he'd be going to a local group home when he was discharged from the hospital. Shawn had wisely saved cash while working and had his rent handled. He snuck out of the hospital early and went back home.
He had a 25 caliber semi-auto pistol that could fit in the palm of his hand. He started carrying it because he was considered a snitch by the local Vice Lords. Two months after leaving the hospital, he felt fit and got another construction job. He only worked a few weeks before death came to his door.
He was carrying groceries at night when two silhouettes in dark hoodies and face masks hopped from his hedges pulling pistols. Shawn shot through his coat pocket at the pair. The little 25's pops were muffled by his leather coat pocket. His bullets tapped the torso of the closer shooter. The bullets battered and bounced the bad man’s body backwards, which made his return fire wing wild.
The other shooter's bullet burrowed in Shawn's side. Shawn's pistol popped three more times in rapid fire rounds and two slugs gutted the gunman. He balled up as if whacked by a bat to the body. But that folded over for a few shots blindly at Shawn, which ricocheted off the brick building in wicked whines.
Shawn was shot in his body and another round ripped a nasty gash along his neck. With eerie calm, Shawn slid in his remaining clip. Both assassins were down on the ground, moaning and moving. One lifted his gun. Shawn fired into his fallen foe’s facemask. The lead bored in the gangster’s head and ricocheted in his brain with fatal flips. Shawn staggered up the steps into his building leaving the bodies behind.
He made it into his apartment and wiped the pistol free of prints before tossing it out his window on the neighbor's roof, along with the empty clip. He sagged in his chair while studying his wounds. The bullet wound that nipped his neck likely needed stitches because it was bleeding badly. A bullet had drilled through his lower left side.
He grabbed all his cash. He debated what to do. He'd left a blood trail into his building and apartment. Soon there were sirens that reached his building and he could hear cops’ radios and voices, along with their romping feet. They followed his blood trail and shouted through his door before using a ram to batter his tough door open. By then he'd passed out. He woke up in the hospital. Doctors had operated and said he'd be fine.
He woke up cuffed to the bed frame with a homicide detective waiting beside him. The detective was a tall, fat, balding, ugly, white guy with a bad attitude. Shawn pointed out that he was a citizen murder witness against Tyrel, a Vice Lord gangster, and that two ski masked men with guns shot him at his doorstep.
The cop tried to get Shawn to confess that he'd actually shot first and executed one man while he was down on the ground. Shawn argued he'd been shot dead with Ernie a few months ago by Tyrel and obviously the gang had ambushed him. But the cop just wanted him to confess what he’d done. Shawn asked for a lawyer.
Shawn was charged with two homicides. Tyrel was the one Shawn shot in the face on the ground. The assigned ADA claimed Shawn had reloaded his pistol and then shot Tyrel in the face at close range while he was down out of action. The ADA said that wasn't self-defense, it was an execution. The state even had an eyewitness to Shawn's last killing shot in Tyrel's face.
Shawn was assigned a lawyer through the public defender office. Unfortunately; most public defenders aren't great lawyers. They're stuck with huge caseloads for low money and have little time to care for clients. But even great lawyers have to do some pro bono cases and Shawn got lucky with a good pay lawyer, named Tim Lang.
Tim Lang was a small and slim, good-looking white guy with blond hair and emerald eyes that missed little. He got Shawn's recorded interview suppressed because Shawn was a minor and shouldn't have been interviewed by detectives without an adult guardian present. Lang also filed a speedy jury trial motion. Lang’s private investigator spoke to the eyewitness and the eyewitness admitted the detectives had largely bullied him into his statement.
The ADA filed a motion to waive Shawn to adult court. Several months later on the day that the judge was going to decide whether to waive Shawn into adult court, the ADA made a plea offer. Lang advised Shawn to take it.
Shawn pled to two manslaughter charges and was sentenced to juvenile jail until he turned 18. He wouldn’t have an adult record or be on probation once released. He was transferred from the jail infirmary to general population at the juvenile prison and was in a fight a few days later.
A group of black Crypt gang bangers tried to make him pay protection money in the dorm. Shawn refused and challenged the gang's enforcer, named Titus, to fight beyond camera and guard sight in the bathroom.
The enforcer stood a head taller than Shawn and was bigger in bulk. In the bathroom the enforcer lashed a low leg kick at Shawn's shin, followed by a fist to the face. Shawn stepped forward inside the attack pattern, so the kick clipped his calf and the blow at his nose flew into his forehead. Shawn's elbow blow mangled the man's mouth in a burst of blood and two teeth fell on the floor like bloody tic tacs. Shawn's other arm hooked high on the guy's neck in a side headlock. It jerked Titus’ head down and around, so Shawn could snake his other arm around his foe's throat. Shawn struggled to secure a guillotine choke.
Titus’ fist flashed and smashed Shawn with two terrific hits to the body. They fell fighting on the floor as the enforcer ferociously flailed for freedom. Titus couldn’t quite flop free to use harmful hands on Shawn. Shawn squeezed the guillotine choke as his foe faded into unconsciousness.
A kick clobbered Shawn's skull. The kicker howled while hopping and holding his broken toe. His jumping made him blunder into his rushing, buddies' bodies, upsetting the mob's momentum. The gang's intent to attack Shawn with flurries of fists and feet failed from their bumbling buddy barring them.
Shawn sprang up, trapped in a close corner. But the small space helped him because they couldn't all surround him and they tried not to trample the unconscious enforcer. The next thirty seconds was a blur of blows, throws, holds, knees, feet, and elbows. Shawn endured the onslaught of hits and kicks while landing a lot of licks too. He was like a bear backed in a corner, swatting and snapping at a pack of hounds. Then guards rushed in shouting and stopping the mad melee of the mob.
Shawn got his first taste of the hole, where he spent 30 days trapped in a tiny cell 23 hours a day with only one hour out to shower, shave, use the phone, grab books, and use the weight machine. The rest of the time he sat in his cell without any TV or radio. Other prisoners would shout between cells talking or arguing. Sometimes when they came out for their hour they would throw cups of piss and shit through the bars at each other. It was an asylum existence. Some guys tried suicide by hanging themselves or slashing throats and wrists.
Shawn kept praying to God and talking to his mother's soul that he believed was watching him. He thought of the demons that he’d seen carrying Ernie’s soul off and he wondered what Ernie had done in life to deserve that. Doctors told him that many people hallucinate while clinically dead and that he shouldn’t worry about it. Shawn wanted to believe in what he saw while dead.
He did his 30 days and was moved to a new dorm in general population. Any hopes he had of laying low to avoid the hole quickly ended. He was the new guy in a dorm and had no gang affiliation or protection. This time it was a motley crew of Gangster Disciples that chose to test him, demanding he pay protection or get beat up each week he didn't pay.
Shawn stepped from his cell with a sock that had three hard bars of soap inside. It created a medieval mace with serious striking force for the first few hits before the soap bars were busted to bits. One gangster showed Shawn a shank attempting to intimidate him.
Shawn struck with impressive accuracy and fluid moves. He whipped his weapon and it hit the shank holder's head horribly hard. His foe's face burst into a red ruin from a broken nose. He dropped like a rock.
Shawn's second swing mauled another man's mouth, shattering and scattering several teeth. He fell flat, stunned senseless. Shawn had swatted down two foes with two blows. His third slash smacked the back of another foe's head as he tried to flee the fight. The mace blow laid him low, twitching in a pool of blood from a gashed scalp. The other gangsters fled like sheep from a wolf.
Shawn flushed the soap shards down one toilet and the sock in another. The gangsters snitched and he was hauled to the hole again. He did 45 days there while fighting suicidal thoughts. He went from the hole to a cell block reserved for highly assaultive prisoners. He had his own cage and largely stayed to himself lifting weights, reading, radio listening and TV watching.
Shawn had a 315 pound bench press and that irritated the biggest guy on the block, appropriately called Big D. He towered a head above Shawn with about fifty more pounds of fat and muscle. They argued over a weight bench and went into the bathroom to fight out of obvious sight from guards and cameras. There wasn't much room to rumble.
D used a sumo wrestler rush with punches. They collided in combat, Shawn endured several stunning skull strikes and body blows before he locked an anaconda choke on D's throat. D thought he was winning as he secured a mounted ground and pound position. Shawn's throat choke cut off D's carotid artery and windpipe. D went limp in Shawn's grip.
Shawn rolled the bigger man's body off him. Shawn delivered two powerful punches to D's low floating rib and it audibly cracked. Shawn bashed the bruiser's right eye and left him like that. Shawn walked away and cleaned up his bloody, bruised, and swelling face. D got up with his right eye closed with swelling and floating rib broken, making it hard to even breathe. They were lucky not to get caught for the fight and respected each other after that.
Shawn did the rest of his time on that cellblock. He very badly wanted to make something of his life. He didn’t want to be a gangster thug or loser in prison again. He attended church. He received his HSED there along with certificates in welding, keyboarding, and computer literacy. He wanted to go to college, but needed loans. The TV commercials for the military offering student loans to soldiers got his interest.
He wanted to fight terrorism and he wanted money for a higher education. He joined the army to accomplish both goals.
Unfortunately; it wouldn’t go the way Shawn hoped.
Bio:
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in Chiron Review, Short-Story.Me, Churches, Children and
Daddies, Down in the Dirt, The Horror Zine, Dark Harbor, Flash Phantoms, Blood Moon
Rising, Phantomania, Lowlife Lit, The Listening Eye, J Journal, Evening Street Review, Conceit,
Freedom Fiction Journal, Spotlight on Recovery, Muscle and Fitness, Outdoor Life and many
other magazines. His play Jailhouse Confessions was performed at the Kennedy center in
Washington, DC in 2019. You can find more of his writings at tomkropp.wordpress.com. He has
many fantasy novels published.