Free Tail of the Devil by Danielle DeVor

don’t-fuck-with-me sort of walk.
    She stopped at a rundown hotel. It was the type that at night had the neon Jesus Saves sign above the door.
    “Cree, what the hell you bring home now?” A man standing on the stoop asked. He was tall, with a bald head and broad shoulders. His white wife beater shirt was sweat stained which made an odd and ugly contrast next to his dark skin. While his clothing was dirty and gross, he wore several gold chains around his neck that glinted in the sunlight.
    “Dequan, this here’s Mathias. He gonna stay wif me for a while.”
    The man looked Mathias up and down. “Mebbe’ in a few years he can work.”
    Lucretia narrowed her eyes at him. “You listen to me Dequan Gregory; this here is a good kid. I ain’t gonna allow you to do him like dat.”
    Dequan raised his lips in a snarl. “Girl, I ain’t in no mood today to deal with your bullshit. Fine, kid stays, but you goin’ to pay for him. He ain’t no concern of mine.”
    Lucretia grabbed Mathias by the arm and led him into the hotel. The green paint was chipped from the walls exposing the old plaster underneath. The registration desk was a box with cast iron bars over the openings.
    “Hey Carl!” Lucretia tapped her fingernails on the counter.
    “Hold your horses, you mangy mutt.”
    There was an old and decrepit white man behind the desk. Tufts of white hair stood up from his head from where he’d been sleeping. Carl grabbed a key from the hook behind the desk and passed it through the slot underneath the counter top.
    “Dequan pay me up til next month?” Lucretia asked.
    Carl looked at some papers on the counter. “Yep, you ain’t due til the fifteenth.”
    Lucretia nodded. “Good. Oh, by the way. This here Mathias, he gonna be stayin wif me.”
    Carl looked at Mathias. “Where he gonna go when you got guests?”
    Lucretia sighed. “Didn’t think bout that. Shit.”
    Carl shook his head. “Eh, don’t worry. Kid can come down here and watch TV in the office with me.”
    “Damn Carl, what would I do without you?”
    “Prolly drop dead.”
    Lucretia laughed and led Mathias over to the elevator.
    The ride was slow, but Mathias wasn’t going to complain. This place had air conditioning.
    Lucretia got off on the sixth floor. She shook her head. “Boy, you gotta stop bein’ a scaredy cat. People ‘round here can smell it, and if you ain’t tough like me, they’ll eat you alive.”
    She unlocked a door and Mathias followed her into the room. The room was plastered in the same yucky green that was downstairs. The plaster wasn’t as chipped up here in the room. Lucretia had tried to make it look homey with posters on the walls and some multicolored fake flowers on the bedside table. The table was made of some sort of black plastic. The bedspread was old and looked like undulating ocean waves. It was probably the ugliest room Mathias had ever seen. It smelled musty.
    “Nice digs, ain’t they? I try to keep it like this so’s I can kill the bugs when I see ‘em.”
    “Bugs?” Mathias asked.
    “The biggest motherfuckin’ cockaroaches you ever seen. I found a platform shoe kills ‘em best.” She laughed manically.
    “Uh...o.k.” He didn’t like the idea of bugs, but bugs were better than sleeping outside.
    She laughed again. “Boy, you kill me.” She picked up a shoe with a tall heel and a really thick sole. “See this here’s a platform shoe. You whack the damn thing with this and his guts go flyin’”
    “You’re really weird, you know that?”
    She smiled. “That’s why we gets along. You weird too.”
    * * * * *
    That night, Lucretia pulled Mathias into bed with her.
    “Do you think this is o.k.?” Mathias asked.
    She swatted him across the head with a pillow. “We’s sharin a bed, doofus. Not screwin. Sides, you too young fo me anyway.”
    Mathias hunkered down under the covers and relaxed. Soon he was fast asleep.
    * * * * *
    Thump. Thump. Thump.
    Mathias opened his eyes. “What are you