“Malloy! Malloy! Malloy! Send backup!” The officer jumped out his vehicle after witnessing O.T. get gunned down on the pavement of the driveway. “I just saw our suspect Marco Meriwether gun the youngest of the Christian brothers down in cold blood!”
“Don’t worry, more than a few squad cars should be there in a few minutes. And don’t take any unnecessary risks with whoever the gunman is.”
“I told you, it’s Marco. I saw his braids!” The confused policeman drew his weapon as the killer’s car turned around coming in his direction. “He’s getting closer to me as we speak!”
“Naw, guy, you got to be mistaken. Me, Kendrick, and the fugitive apprehension team just snatched a now baldheaded Marco off a Greyhound bus heading east. It seems like he cut off his dreads at the crime scene we were working this morning and then used his victim’s identity to purchase a one-way ticket.”
“Oh, shit!” The officer tossed the two-way radio on the passenger seat before posting up. Knocking over several garbage cans and hitting a car in an attempt to get away from the homicide that was just committed, the driver was faced with the undercover officer’s gun pointed directly at the windshield. “Stop or I’ll fucking shoot!”
Not paying attention to the officer’s threats the car barreled through the one-man barricade leaving no other recourse, but more gunshots to ensue. Losing control of the automobile after being fatally struck by one of the bullets, the driver crashed into a fire hydrant and slumped over to the side of the passenger seat. As the cocky but nervous policeman approached the vehicle through the heavy water flow spewing from the hydrant with his pistol still drawn, he cautiously opened the door snatching the hood off the driver. As all the braids fell out of the hood, he got a good look at the deceased’s face.
“Oh my fucking God!” He frowned, confused as other squad cars finally arrived on the premises followed by an ambulance.
Still wearing a plastic inmate identification bracelet on her wrist, having just been released from jail earlier that morning, Miss Tangelina Marie Gibson, aka Tangy, was pronounced dead on the scene.
Share and Share Alike . . .
Making sure the gunfire had ceased, Kenya poked her head out in total disbelief that this type of madness was happening in her always quiet community. Normally, if there was any type of small disturbance going on it usually involved her and her household. But this chaos seemed to be a couple of houses down. While still holding the paperwork and her cell phone Kenya tip-toed down the staircase listening to all the commotion the people outside were making. Only peeping out the door, Kenya didn’t dare go outside not wanting to get involved considering all the illegal firearms they had stashed throughout the condo.
Damn, I wonder what he did. Shockingly she saw the legs of a man face down in the front driveway of her neighbor’s house with some of the obviously still rattled landscaping workers gathered around him. Since O.T. had parked several houses farther down the block Kenya couldn’t see his car from where she stood and had no way to know that it was Storm’s little brother who was badly injured, or, worse than that, dead.
“Help me!” She heard a faint murmured cry coming from the living room. “Please.”
Kenya had forgotten about her sister who was the main reason she had started coming down the stairs in the first place. “Is you still perpetrating like you in pain or what? With ya fake-ass! I’m about tired of all this showboating you always doing!”
“Please, Kenya.” London reached out her hand to her twin. “Help. I need you.”
“Oh, so now you on the floor, huh? What the fuck is wrong with you! You going too far!” Kenya held the papers up. “And what’s the deal on this bullshit?”
“Help me, Kenya!” London raised her other arm and that’s when her twin noticed a hole the size of a quarter in her upper shoulder blade that was bleeding.
“Damn!” Kenya panicked throwing the papers on the couch looking at the broken window on the far right side of her living room. “A stray bullet must’ve come through here! Damn white people in this neighborhood ain’t no better than us!”
“I’m hurting so bad, Kenya, and I think the baby is about to come. Will you call an ambulance or O.T. back and see what’s taking him so long? Arrggh!” she screamed out in agony taking short breaths.
London had to be in shock and delirious not even realizing that she had been shot. “I love my baby. I love my baby,” she whispered as she panted desperately trying to catch her breath.
As the blood soaked through her shirt and she kept rambling on about her and Storm’s baby, Kenya became strangely agitated and cold. One part of her wanted to do the right thing and immediately get her sister some medical attention, but the other part wouldn’t let her do it. Look at this backstabber. With a vengeful demeanor she stood indecisively contemplating what move to make next as her twin lay in the middle of her condo’s living room floor bleeding to death.
“Why did you have to fuck my man?” Kenya barked out really expecting to get an answer in the middle of everything that was happening. “That shit was foul!”
Hearing ambulance sirens in the distance, London mistakenly thought they were for her and struggled to get off the floor. Staring at the papers on the couch, with callous intentions Kenya took her foot pushing London back down and holding her there.
“My baby, my baby, my baby,” London kept repeating holding her stomach.
Kenya saw her sister’s body start to shake and heard her voice get louder. Not wanting anyone to overhear the desperate cries for help, she went over to the CD player turning on some jazz to drown out the noise. Getting down on her knees, Kenya then helped a confused and in pain London take off her track pants and spread her twin’s legs wide open. With no medical training to speak of except watching ER on television every week for four years straight, Kenya saw that London was right and wasn’t pretending. The baby was coming and in fact had already started crowning.
“Where’s Storm at?” London sweated tossing her head from side to side. “He said he wanted to be here to see his son born. Is he here?”
“What!” Kenya hissed. “Storm said what?”
“Can you call him for me?” London was in a daze as she kept getting Kenya angrier with her constant pleas for her man as she pushed and pushed. “Storm! Storm! Storm!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Kenya took a deep breath taking one of her socks off stuffing it in London’s crying mouth. “Chew on this and stop calling my man! He don’t want you to be the mother of his baby! That’s my job!”
Five minutes later she was delivering London’s baby on the living room floor. Just as the ultrasound had shown months earlier it was indeed a boy. Storm’s newborn son had an identical birthmark on his lower backside legitimizing the fact that he was a Christian. Kenya, amazed that she’d successfully delivered the infant, laid the crying baby on London’s stomach and went into the kitchen. Opening the drawer near the sink, she searched for and finally found a huge razor-sharp butcher knife with jagged edges. Grabbing a few clean dish towels off the racks and some old bread twists out the junk drawer Kenya spitefully headed back toward a suffering London.
Slipping in and out of consciousness from losing so much blood, London was barely aware of what was going on. Now Kenya, the same person she’d deliberately taunted less than an hour ago, leaned down over her with the knife in her hands lifting the newborn up. Taking the bread twists she wrapped them tightly around the blood-filled umbilical cord and deviously smiled as she thought about Storm. Then vindictively glaring at her reflection in the shiny sides of the butcher knife she cut it off severing all ties the baby had with London.
“Where you going with my baby?” a weak and drained London muttered as the gunshot wound continued to bleed. “Let me hold him. Let me hold my baby,” she begged as she started gagging on her own blood.
“Your baby?” Kenya questioned wrapping the crying infant in the dish towels and sat down in Storm’s favorite chair rocking him in her arms as she watched her sister struggle to hold on to life. “You must have made a mistake. This is my baby, mine and Storm’s!”
“But we’re family. We’re all we got. I love you, Kenya.” London sadly took her last breath.
“Say you promise,” Kenya looked down toward the floor and nonchalantly replied ignoring the fact her twin sister had just died in front of her eyes because she chose not to get her any help.
Turning up the music more in an attempt to ignore the sounds of the frantic neighbors knocks who’d recognized O.T. as the gunshot victim, Kenya who had obviously lost her mind hummed to her now deceased twin sister’s newborn son while she patiently waited for his daddy Storm to return home so they could be one big, happy family.
“Don’t worry, little one, your real mommy’s here with you.”