I stood breathing heavily underneath a canopy-covered walkway in front of what seemed to be a recently closed-down nightclub. I had been running without direction a good while now and was exhausted. It began lightly raining somewhere around the time I ran through an underpass of the interstate. I began collecting my thoughts and decided to find a business that may let me use their phone so I could call the police to report the men mugging me.
Thinking of how comfortable I would be in my bed if I could just find a phone somewhere to use, I decided to head up the street. As I walked past a few closed businesses, I noticed a bright light coming from a warehouse door cracked open a bit. I looked up and there was a hand-painted sign that read “Sanchez Appliance Warehouse” and, although I thought it was a bit odd for an appliance warehouse to be open at this time, I decided to walk in and ask if I may use their phone.
I opened the door and slowly walked in. I looked around and very nervously said in a very low voice, “Hello… is there anyone here?”
“Hey! What the fuck? Who the fuck are you?” – A demanding voice yelled out from behind a few crates of the half empty warehouse. There were only a few refrigerators in the far corner to my right and about 5 stoves on the next corner directly across from me. A black Yukon was parked inside facing the garage door in the back.
Four men dressed in brown and white quickly made their way toward me. One of the four was freakishly tall, and in a very deep voice yelled out, “Identify yourself, motherfucker!”
The large one who spoke first clearly became agitated by my silence. He pulled out a gun, pointed it at me and yelled, “Are you stupid, ese? We’re fucking talking to you! What’s your name?”
Exhausted and fearful, I stuttered my name as well as I could. “Ja… J-James… my name’s James,” I stuttered.
“Jimmy? Well, why the fuck didn’t you say so? Don’t look so scared, man, I’m not going to shoot you. I’m Sobres, this is Ruthless, that’s Insane and that ‘joto’ motherfucker, don’t worry about him.”
“Alright, guys, let’s go,” said the man just referred to as ‘joto’, “time for business… we’ll talk in the truck.”
They all started heading for the truck then insane addressed me for the first time, “come on, ese, get in the truck. Let’s go!”
I was extremely confused and had no idea what was going on. The men were obviously armed and dangerous. I did not want to make any of them angry. I made my way to the truck and in a low voice asked, “Do any of you have a cell phone I may borrow? I have to call the police.”
They stopped cold all at once and quickly turned around. They looked at me as if I had said… well, I said I was going to call the police and they were obviously criminals… they looked at me as if they wanted to kill me.
The awkward silence was sharply broken by the one whose name I still did not know. “Pinche vato has jokes,” he said then laughed hysterically for a moment. “My name’s not actually ‘joto’, man, it’s Otro, but these putos think it’s funny to call me ‘joto’… don’t ever call me that, you hear? Now, come one, get on the truck, let’s go.”
No comments:
Post a Comment