My dad died in the LA ghetto when I was only 14.
That's also the night I killed five gang members and damned my soul.
My dad was a disabled vet. He lost his left leg in Iraq. He lived with chronic pain from his wounds and he fought his addiction to painkillers and alcohol. My dad was white and my mom black. She abandoned us when I was only two and we never heard from her again. We struggled to survive on my dad's military disability checks each month. And he did some side jobs for cash. I tried to get jobs too, but he only let me work during summers off school. During the school year he was a strict parent insisting on decent grades and encouraging me into sports after school. I was on the wrestling and football teams in middle school and he usually made it to all my games and matches. He actually used to be a brown belt in jujitsu, so he spent time in our yard mock wrestling with me showing me an impressive repertoire of blows, holds, and throws along with some sneaky low kicks. For a one-legged man he was strong, swift, and very agile. I ended up in my share of fights due to racism. The white kids didn't think I was white enough and the black kids didn't think I was black enough. I tried hard to avoid fights due to my dad's wishes. I won most of my fights, lost some, and learned a lot in the process.
Our new neighbors were horrible. The nice old lady that shared our yard had died and her grandson inherited the place. Her grandson was a Crip gang banger and he started off partying all hours with his buddies. When my dad told him he needed to turn the music down it didn't go over well. I came home from the store hearing the rapid fire pops of pistols in my backyard. I dashed past the path to peer through the hedges. I saw my dad down on the ground with three gangsters standing over him with pistols. In the dim porch light and pale moon glow I watched the tallest one fire a final bullet into my dad's brain. The trio actually laughed while stepping back from the blood splatter caused from the bullet's sledgehammer effect on my dad's skull.
I went into a white hot rage. I didn't care if I lived or died or went to prison. Instead of fleeing I slipped into the house upstairs and snatched my dad's .308 caliber semi-auto rifle. I peered out my dad's window to see the three shooters cutting across the neighbor's lawn. I aimed at the tallest one. My crosshairs settled on the tall shooter's back. I gently squeezed the trigger just like my dad taught me during our many target practices in hunting by his friend's farm outside town. The rifle made an immense ka-boom that rattled the house around me and echoed into the city. My bullet chewed through the center of his spine, making the hollow point bullet bulge wide expanding inside him. The .308 round pounded a fist sized hole out the front of his chest. My empty brass shell flipped free of the action as another shell slid into the chamber. My crosshairs settled on the second shooter. He'd spun, pulling his gun. I again aimed at the center body mass and squeezed the trigger. The thug was staggered back by the bullet's brutal blow that tore a hole through his torso. He died quietly.
The third guy spotted my muzzle fire and fanned a fusillade up at me. His flurry of fire riddled the room above me. My crosshairs touched his torso and I triggered a shot that socked him in the stomach. The bullet belted his body like a bludgeon, beating him down and dying.
Three targets down. But my neighbors were watching because two more gang members appeared peppering my position in a swarm of shots. I fled as glass crashed raining on me. I darted downstairs to peer out another window. I filled my crosshairs with my foe and fired again. My shot flew high, nailing his neck, inflicting an exit wound that half decapitated him.
The fifth foe was broadcasting bullets into my house. I scrambled to the next room and once again aimed out the window while leaning over a table for steadier aim. He was blindly bombarding the room I just left, riddling it with rounds. In response my rifle roared and the bullets chopped through his chest like a medieval axe. It clubbed him down where he didn't move much.
I was alone facing five bodies outside. My dad made six.
My dad was a religious man. He didn't go to church, but he tried to instill in me a faith that we all possessed souls of energy and when we died we were judged on what we've done as mortals. I'd humored him, but never really believed it. I thought like most scientists do, that we lived and died with no afterlife.
That night some force spun my thoughts down an alien path I wouldn't have even considered. An inner voice ordered me to wipe the rifle free of my prints and put it in my dad's hand. I hesitated because it seemed like I was framing my dad for the murders I committed. But that same powerful voice told me my dad wanted to protect me one more time by taking the gun, so it would look like he was the shooter.
I felt like my dad was teaching me a final lesson. I listened by obeying the orders. I wiped my rifle down and I snuck out to put it in his hands before darting back through the door and calling the cops. Mechanically, I reported that five gunmen had just started a gunfight with my dad and I was hiding inside. I left the phone off the hook and grabbed the Comet cleanser by our sink washing my hands with it up to my elbows.
I flashed back to the first time, police took me into the jail for a street fight with a bully. Once my dad got me home he gave me advice I never forgot.
"Listen close to me, son," he ordered, "your skin color will cause you problems in life. Some people are racist some aren't. But when it comes to cops don't you ever take chances. If cops ever yell at you to stop or to put your hands up, do it right away. If cops yell at you, obey what they say, so they don't shoot you and always keep your hands above your head to show you're surrendering.
"Another thing, never talk to cops. If cops want to speak to you then you tell them that your dad said you should never talk to cops without your dad and a lawyer present. The cops will try to trick you. They'll try to scare you into talking. Don't believe what they say. Don't try to talk to them even if they say that they'll let you go if you just answer some questions. That's a trick. No good comes from talking to cops. You just insist they call me that you want to see me and that you want a lawyer. Do you understand me?"
"Yep," I nodded.
"What do you say when cops try talking to you?" he demanded.
"That I want to see my dad and lawyer. I don't want to talk without my dad and my lawyer," I replied firmly.
"Good," he smiled down at me, "someday your freedom might decide on you following that advice."
That day had come.
When all cops swarmed the scene I parried their questions insisting I wanted to have my dad and a lawyer with me before I said anything. They did try to scare me and trick me into talking. They even told me that my dad would want me to talk to them. I told him again I wanted a lawyer.
They hauled me to the jail and made some more attempts to trick me into talking before they finally called social services and the emergency number for the public defender's office.
They also did a GSR on me. That's a gunshot residue test. The comet had cleansed me free of any GSR.
I lied to my lawyer and the social worker telling them both that the five men started shooting and my dad shot back. I stuck to my story. The investigators and district attorney's office were suspicious. The way my dad was lying outside didn't fit the crime scene. But since I was shooting from inside my house no one saw me actually shoot. Two of the neighbors said they did see me go outside by my dad and it looked like I was giving him something, but they couldn't say what.
I wasn't charged with anything.
I ended up in the system as a foster kid and it was a rough life for me. But I knew I was lucky to be free. My freedom was the last gift my dad gave me and I tried not to waste it.
Unfortunately the memories of what happened to my dad in front of me, and what I’d done to avenge him, haunted me. I struggled with alcohol and drugs. Then one night in a drunken, blind rage, I strangled the woman that I claimed to love. Afterwards I hid her body and cleaned up the scene. The cops suspected me, but never could prove it.
My girlfriend’s father was certain that I was guilty and he was enraged the cops didn’t put me in prison. It turned out that he had inoperable cancer and figured he had nothing left to lose. He caught me when I was leaving my building and he used a pistol to pump projectiles in my pectoral and slugs in my stomach. He fired his last shot in my face, fracturing my forehead and splitting my skull. He walked away believing me dead.
I did die there. I remember laying there helpless as a dark black, small tornado twirled to life in front of me. From it stepped three creatures that seemed to be made out of smoke and shadows. Their foggy figures were shaped much like upright walking gargantuan grizzly bears. They had titanic talons and teeth. Barbed spikes ran along their spines and long tails. Long horns hooked from their heads. Their eyes glowed like fire. They were snarling and growling in some strange demonic language as they reached down and snatched my soul from my body. Their talons trenched in the mesh of my astral energy soul. The pain was like being slowly cut with searing hot knives. I struggled helplessly in their control. They carried me towards the spinning dark wormhole and I sensed that portal would take me to the dimension they’d come from. I could hear myself screaming over their bestial sounds of pleasure.
Suddenly my soul was back in my body. A medic had arrived and was saving my life. The demons faded away and oblivion embraced me.
I woke up in the hospital. I was so relieved to be alive that I didn’t even care about pressing charges on my shooter. But he had already shot himself when cops showed up at his door.
Since then many people have told me that I simply had a nightmare while dying, but I know better. Those demons had almost taken me away. I spent the next few years devoting myself to God and trying to do good deeds. I can only hope that worked.
Unfortunately cancer has found me and I'm writing this memoir from my hospital bed. I'm only 36 and soon I'll be dead. I pray the demons aren’t waiting for me this time.
Bio:
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in Chiron Review, Churches, Children and Daddies, The Horror Zine, Dark Harbor, Down in the Dirt, Freedom Fiction Journal, Blood Moon Rising, Flash Phantoms, Lowlife Lit, The Listening Eye, J Journal, Evening Street Review, Conceit, Spontaneous Spirits, Bracelet Charm, Spotlight on Recovery, Muscle and Fitness, Outdoor Life, Woodworker’s Journal 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 and Scars Writings websites. He has many novels published.