Free Lust by Noire

real deep and hock-spit loudly, right down in the dead child’s face.
     A deathly hush fell over the church like a smothering wool blanket, and then the air exploded with shouts of anger and clacking gats as people got swole and started brandishing burners like they had been transported to the Wild-Wild-West.
    Lil Lee had been the first to pull her piece and she stood posted up by the open coffin looking deadly as hell as she gripped her tool and waved that shit around in the air.
    But Lil Lee wasn’t the only one carrying heat. The men of the Talented Ten were up on their feet and ready to blast too, and Trey instinctively pushed Taleah down to the floor and urged her to ball up under the pew.
    It only took him a second to see what was up and assess the danger. About a dozen of Lil Lee’s low-level underlings had blended in with the funeral mourners. They’d waited until she made her grand entrance, and then they’d taken her cue and jumped into position. They were all young’uns and they were all armed too, aiming their pistols recklessly around the church at kids, old people, and anybody else who was within bullet-range. Trey’s blood almost boiled when he scanned the crowd and saw that Mayhem’s younger brother Maleek was strapped up and standing amongst the Divine Nine crew.
    “Uh-huh,” the beautiful young drug queen barked as she sneered coldly at Trey and his crew. “We got us one of them Mexican standoffs.” She nodded toward Princess’ body. “And all because this lil dumb-ass fiend fucked around and got my best slanga murked!” She looked around the church. “Somebody out there gave J-Ugly a ride off a rooftop because this lil trick laying here wanted to get high, and I’m telling all y’all mothafuckas right now that somebody is gonna pay.”
    She reached in her back pocket and came out with a fistful of drug vials. Sneering, she flung them down at Princess and they rolled all over the corpse.
    “Get high in hell, bitch!”
    Shooting another glance at Trey, Lil Lee turned around and switched her bomb-booty back down the aisle, parting the crowd with a wide sweep of her gun. Her young’uns pushed out of the aisles and followed behind her like trained puppies, walking backward and keeping their wary eyes on Trey and every other pistol-packing niggah in sight.
    “That’s the guy!” Taleah stood up from her hiding spot and elbowed Trey as the posse of drug slangas moved toward the church’s door. “Trey, that’s him!” she half-whispered. “That’s the guy!”
    “What guy?” he leaned over and asked her as he watched Maleek and the others back outta the door. “What guy, Taleah?”
    “The guy who so—” The teenager bit her tongue as she locked eyes with the fine skinny dude with the cornrows who had conducted the drug transaction with Princess and a chill zipped through her bones.
    She took a quick glance at her best friend laying up dead in her coffin. “Never mind,” Taleah said softly. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Never mind.”
    By the time the church’s door slammed shut there were plenty of gangstas left standing in the house of the Lord who were ready and willing to rush outside and go head up with Lil Lee and her crew. But Trey quickly checked them. He held his hand in the air signaling to let the Divine Nine posse leave in peace. There was a time and a place for everything, and with countless pews filled with scared women and children this wasn’t the time for gunfire and mayhem, and it damn sure wasn’t the place.
     
    $$$$$
     
    The church was finally settling back down as the people of Harlem regrouped from the rude disruption and continued to pay their last respects to Princess. The preacher had stood up from his crouched position behind the podium, and the funeral director had emerged from behind Princess’ coffin where he had ducked and hidden when all the guns came out.
    Trey and everybody else had taken their seats again, and the