Grippy-->Gritty

More page 162 action. I had so much fun writing the first one that I decided to make another. It was a good prompt, okay?

My Brother Sam Is Dead: A Memoir

held their collective breath as I stumbled into the warehouse.

“Did you do your duty, kid?” Frankie asked, low and menacing.

“Yah Frankie, I knifed him. I knifed him good,” I said breathlessly. “He ain’t….he ain’t gonna cause us any more trouble.”

Frankie searched my eyes for a lie. Finding none, he broke his scowl, loped over and scooped me up, easy as a poppa bear snatching up a cub, and gave me a rough embrace.

“Ya done good, kid, real good. I wadn’t sure about you at first, but the blood on thad knife is good enough proof to me,” Frankie growled, loud enough for the whole gang to hear. “You’re a full member now, kid, congrats. You’re bruddah woulda been so proud of ya, so proud.”

I bit my lip almost until it bled and felt my knuckles go white around the brass hilt of my knife. I’d wanted to scream, to drive the 6 inch blade, still wet with blood, up in between Frankie’s ribs. But I controlled myself and mumbled “Thanks, Frankie,” into the folds of his black leather jacket. I couldn’t lay all my cards on the table, not yet. I knew this was the gang responsible for my brother’s death, and while Frankie might have pulled the trigger, but I wanted the man who had made the order.

Big Fish Wallace was his name, and he was indeed a big fish, at least now. He’d earned a reputation for ruthlessness rising through the ranks; my brother was just one of many notches on his belt. Wallace had been so efficient on the streets that his boss had been reluctant to promote him to the board of directors, but his boss died a mysterious, gruesome death shortly afterwards, and Big Fish moved up. Off the streets and into the boardroom, Wallace was making a big splash. He had stepped up sales in his territory, and he’d embarked on an extremely successful, aggressive new recruitment program.

In fact, it was this very program that allowed me to join in with relatively little scrutiny. Desperate for fresh meat, the Southdale Crew was willing to take on just about anybody, even a scrawny 17 year old with nothing to his name but a hunting knife and a set of cold, icy grey eyes.

Of course, I wasn’t really 17. I was 23 by then, the same age my brother would have been. But Sammy had been a big guy, and I was so little for my age that I was able to pass myself off as his kid brother, eager to follow in the hero’s footsteps. If they’d guessed my real plans, they would’ve killed me on the spot.

Now as I quietly picked at the blood on my fingernails, I started to doubt the soundness of my plan for the first time. I’d never meant to hurt anybody, not anybody that didn’t deserve it at least, but I had just stabbed a man. I hoped he made it, got to a hospital, maybe got out of the business. He had more of a chance than Sammy ever did. Sam the artist, Sam the dreamer, the gentle giant, such a funny kid, a good kid. But these bastards had drawn him in, chewed him up, sucked all the goodness out of him until his own momma didn’t recognize him, then spit him out…and shot him.

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P.S.: So all the type on blogger is really small and hard to read on my monitor now. How can I fix this? My eyes hurt.