Free This Wicked World by RICHARD LANGE Page A

go out and rob a bank, I swear to God I will. ’Cause you trusted me, and that’s a serious fucking thing.”
    Eton stares at Virgil with those weird different-colored eyes of his, and Virgil wonders if he’s finally going to go off on him for losing the drugs, but the guy just smiles and says, “Man, I gotta get out of this town.” He reaches for the two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi on the coffee table and refills his big green plastic glass. “Don’t ever try heroin, okay?” he says after taking a sip. “Promise me that.”
    “I promise,” Virgil says, once again not knowing where the hell dude is coming from or how he got there.
    There’s a knock at the front door.
    Eton leans forward in his chair and cocks his head. “Am I expecting customers?” he asks himself. “What day is today?”
    “Friday,” Virgil says.
    Eton stands and walks to the door, glass in hand. “Yeah,” he calls out after pressing his ear to the thick wood.
    “Open the fucking door. Delivery from Taggert.”
    Taggert. Virgil has heard that name before. Eton turns to him with a scared look on his face. “Dude,” he whispers, “there’s a…” but is interrupted by more knocking.
    “Fuck,” Eton says. He twists the deadbolt, and whoever is on the other side pushes the door open, knocking him off balance, and spilling his Pepsi. Virgil watches from the couch as two men step inside and slam the door shut. The whole house shakes. There’s a big black one with Chinese eyes and a little white one with a ponytail and a bandage on his neck. Both are carrying guns.
    “Are you the owner?” the black guy asks Eton.
    “This is my house,” Eton replies.
    “Remember the money you borrowed from Taggert?”
    Eton tugs on the neck of his T-shirt. “A friend set something up when I needed a little help, yeah,” he says.
    “When’d you pay him back?”
    “I’ve been…”
    “You didn’t pay him back,” the white guy yells. “That’s the answer to that one.”
    Eton sidles away from the men, says, “You know what, you’re really freaking me out.”
    “Hold it right there,” the black guy says, extending his arm and pointing his gun at Eton’s head.
    Eton puts his hands up. “Relax, bro,” he says as he lowers himself into his chair.
    Virgil bounces one knee and chews on a knuckle. He wants to tell these guys he doesn’t know anything about anything and split before any shit goes down, but he’s too afraid to speak up.
    There’s a crash in the kitchen, a dirty pot settling in the sink, and the white guy flinches, snaps his gun toward the sound. He’s breathing funny and sweating like he just ran a mile.
    “What’s that?” he asks sharply. “Who’s back there?”
    “There’s nobody else,” Eton says.
    “Probably a fucking rat, huh?”
    “I don’t know, man. Maybe. Now, look…”
    “You look,” the black guy says, taking a sudden step into the living room. “You’ve got five minutes to pack a bag. Taggert’s tired of your excuses. He’s foreclosing on this place.”
    “You too, twink,” the white guy says to Virgil. “Hit the road.”
    “Wait,” Eton says, his voice strangled into a pathetic whine. “Let me call my friend Olivia. You know her, right? She’ll straighten this out.”
    Oh, yeah. Now Virgil remembers. Taggert is Olivia’s boyfriend out there in the desert. She mentioned him on the phone once. Virgil is so nervous, though, he can’t decide if this is good or bad for him.
    “Nope. No calls, no bullshit,” the black guy says. “Everything’s been said and done.”
    The white guy darts over to Eton and jabs him in the chest with the barrel of his gun. “Pack! Your! Fucking! Bags!” he yells.
    There’s another noise, the old house popping in the heat like it sometimes does. The white guy backs off and looks up at the ceiling with bulging eyes, like he’s afraid something might drop on him.
    “This isn’t happening like this,” Eton says. “Not to my nana’s house.” He stands, a